The Offering
by Darion Beldar
Summary: This is the story of the parents of Crowhaven Road, when Black John originally comes to enchant them all and make his coven of children...otherwise later to be known as The Club.
1. August, 1969

__

1969, Late Summer

"Hi there." A voice from the neighboring other yard said.

Sharon looked up towards the voice, peering through her red-brown hair. She saw a girl, hair dark-honey-blonde, about her age, but with an indefinable aura of...kinship? No, that wasn't right. Almost like teamwork. An ability to work with the tribe, even though she privately considered herself to above the tribe. This one was an interesting contradiction.

Sharon shook her head quickly. Where did she get these ideas? She hadn't seen this girl for more than two seconds, and she didn't even know her name yet. Her brain did the weirdest things sometimes. She started picking up the mail so she wouldn't straighten up and say something impolite. She was new here in New Salem--It wouldn't be a good idea to upset the neighbors her first day here.

"What, you don't like hi?" The neighbor-girl asked, having seen her quick head shake. "_Bonjour_, _Boun Giorno_, _Wilkommen_? Whichever you prefer."

Sharon couldn't keep a straight face and chuckled. "No, hi will do fine, thanks." She picked up the mail and the newspaper and walked over. "Do you really speak all those languages?"

"I only wish." The girl said. "A student of the world unable to get to her classroom, that's me. Carmen Bezile."

"Sharon Aubrer." She said. "I just moved here." She tacked on, as they performed the obligatory handshake over the honest-to-god white picket fence that surrounded Sharon's new home.

"I heard." She grinned, a flash like lightning. Another one of those bizarre hints in Sharon's head--this girl could probably dance up a storm, but discos weren't for her. She'd kick any man who got too friendly, too quickly. "I live with Liz, Elizabeth Franklin."

"She knows about me?" Sharon asked.

"Let's just say that Liz knows a little bit about everybody." Carmen said, with that slightly mischievous grin again.

"Are you guys related?" Sharon asked, racking her brain for any other reason why two young girls would live together.

"Second cousins. We're all a little mixed in here--although I've heard living out of each other's pockets is more like it. We're all kind of related." Carmen nodded back to the house Sharon had just exited. "Do you know them?"

"I'd hope so, if I'm living with them." She said, and then her eyes widened as she realized what had jumped out of her mouth. "I'm sorry--"

"Don't apologize. For god's sake girl, you've got spunk. Which is more than some people have..." She said, looking down the road towards presumably more neighbors that Sharon didn't know yet. Sharon grinned and ducked her head.

"Okay." She said. "Hey, are you guys going to go to New Salem High School in the fall?"

"It's the only joint in town, Sargent." Carmen said. "Yep. We're gonna be juniors."

"I'll...be a junior, I guess." Sharon said. "I mean, I was a sophomore last year at my old school, and they didn't ask me to take a placement test or anything."

Carmen's smile took on a different nature, one slightly more sick and mocking. "You're from Crowhaven Road, dearie. You could graduate right now if you wanted to."

"That would be nice." Sharon said. But she saw from Carmen's eyes that she wasn't kidding. "No shit? Really?"

That disturbing smile again. "Yes." Carmen said. "But I don't think I'll scare you with our bizarre situation when we've just met. How about you come over for...tea sometime before school starts?" Carmen grinned. "Normally I can't stand the shit, but for summer, it's tea or lemonade...and we're about out of lemons. I think you'll like Liz."

"I'd like that." Sharon said truthfully. "So I guess this is bye?" She asked, correctly interpreting little non-verbal signals that showed Carmen wanted her own space.

"For now, yes." Carmen said. "I've got a summer reading list that is calling my name. I could skip it, but I like _The Grapes of Wrath_ for some reason I'm still contemplating upon.

Sharon smiled. She had read that book last year. From what she had gleaned of Carmen's personality, Sharon knew precisely why that book appealed to her. "Have fun, then."

"Will do." Carmen said, heading back to her door and looking over her shoulder one last time. "See ya."

"Yeah." Sharon echoed, going back across the grass to her own front door.


	2. Chapter 2

Sharon closed the door softly, wondering if maybe she should just go back and brave the start of the school year alone. Back home, Sharon had never been particularly outgoing. Saying hi to an absolute stranger when the stranger had greeted her first had probably been the most outgoing social greeting she'd managed in all her life. In Gloucester, she had known everyone by face. Known them just well enough to know that she didn't want to talk to any of them, but knew them all the same.

No one grew up in Gloucester and left for medical school. In Gloucester, you fished. You lived, you died, and in between, you fished. If you were a girl, you went to high school, fell in love with some dashing young fisher-boy, and went off and had some babies. Later on, you got tired of waiting for him to come home and divorced him. Then you were just another debt on his long list of many, and some other woman took your place. It was only after you saw him from the outside that you knew the secret: the boats and the sea had taken your man long before the other women had. It was the sea, the ultimate woman, the one every man in Gloucester wants but can never get. She couldn't be wooed by cold rounds of beer, or sloppy nights in rented rooms. They spent their lives courting her and her mysteries.

Always watching from the outside, Sharon knew what made fishermen tick. She had known what was wrong when Pops had come home drunk off his ass from a sojourn at The Crow's Nest or the Mariner. The problem was, he was still alive. Like a Tijuana hooker, they weren't paying for just the sex. They were paying for the forbidden thrill, the brush with death, and when they came home alive and safe, they hadn't been thrilled enough. Because they always went out again, with lust in their eyes.

In the mornings, back at Gloucester, Sharon would run along the beach. It was hard to explain why, really...more of an abstract yearning than any concrete desire, but running made her feel free. Or not so much free--Sharon didn't have a particularly rebellious nature. She had always felt that her life was set to emulate a perfect pattern, but when she ran in the morning, she felt as if she were deeper in communion with that pattern. As if she were one with the sand and the sky and the sea, and as if, for once, everything was going right on track.

Pop, depending on the severity of his stupor, would leave for the dock when it was still dark outside, so Sharon left about an hour before him. This meant going to sleep early in the evening, which necessitated avoiding her step-father almost to the point of hermitage--and she could happily live with that. To avoid the merry townsfolk, she had taken to walking to the beach the long way around Gloucester, running north just in case any boats were headed out, because they usually went south. Gloucester men followed the swordfish, and the swordfish liked the warm weather. So they headed for the sunshine, for the drowsy warmth and light that increased as they approached the Caribbean.

When she ran, the plopping of her feet upon the cakey wet sand was the only sound in the world. Sharon knew she was fast. She had gotten hold of a stopwatch once and timed herself, and had done it three more times in disbelief. But she never had liked the idea of being on a team enough to do anything about it--no one cared about running in Gloucester High, anyway. They all dropped out or got knocked up. Real smart cookies, they were here.

It was one morning when she was running, as light was beginning to finger the edges of the sky, that she saw him. She would have no idea, until later, how important he would be in her life. She had been dressed in cutoff jeans and a sweatshirt, her unwashed hair in a messy ponytail. Her face was hot and she was panting with exertion--she had just sprinted a quarter-mile. She was standing on the soft part of the sand, with her hands on her knees, trying to get a deep breath. When she first saw the guy, she thought it might be a slight hallucination brought on by the benefit of not enough oxygen. Then he came down from the bluff and went to stand in front of her.

Sharon stood up, quick. Rape in Gloucester wasn't unheard of, though it normally took place in drunken orgies upstairs from one of the local bars. But Mom was dead, and Pop couldn't care less. She had to look out for herself. She picked up a handy piece of driftwood on the sand.

"Put that shit down." The voice said, coming towards her. A lit cigarette landed on the ground at her feet. "I'm not gonna hurt you, for godsakes."

"Oh yeah? Then what the hell are you doing here? Like watching young girls in the morning, asshole?"

The man chuckled. "You'd think so highly of yourself. You're just like him, all spit and fire."

_Make one move in my direction and I'll show you what fire can do_, Sharon thought.

The man hiked an eyebrow at her and looked at Sharon's stick cynically. If she hadn't known better, Sharon would have thought he had heard her.

"Yeah, right." He said. "Well. So you're Sharon."

"How do you know my name? Who are you?" She asked, backing up a step. Not smart, kid, she scolded herself. Keep doing that and he'll have you in the ocean. Where'll you be then?

The man didn't answer. "You look a lot like your mom."

"She was prettier than me." Sharon said. It was true, too. Her mom had had long curly red hair, and soft brown eyes. Sharon had reddish-brown hair that was wavy and feathery, which was why she kept it pulled back all the time. It wouldn't go straight or curly, just some bizarre hybrid of the two. Her eyes were a dark brown that almost looked black--they didn't go with her hair at all, and her skin was too pale. She was also too skinny, all angles and bones jutting out. She was sixteen, and where other girls were putting on curves, she was losing them. The man shrugged, as if he couldn't be bothered to pass judgement. Then something in the sentence caught his attention.

"Was?" He asked. "She's..."

"Yeah." Sharon said. "A couple of years ago."

"Oh. Shit." He said. He ran a hand through his hair, and his eyes seemed to take on some great weight. He pulled out another cigarette, put it in his mouth, lit it, cupping his hands to shield the young ember from the wind. "That's a damn shame. She was a nice lady, your mom."

"Yeah. She was. Mind if I ask how you knew her?"

The man shook his head. "We were...friends growing up, I guess you'd say."

"Are you...my father?" Sharon asked. He didn't look like her, at all. His face was a different shape, with a prouder nose. His hair was a dark blonde and his eyes were blue.

He chuckled. "Nah." Then his face sobered. "Actually, kid, I'm sorry...but your father's dead."

"Oh." Sharon said. Well, she had never known him anyway. No loss. "Okay."

"Listen." He said, and looked her intently in the eye. "Your mom's dead. Your dad is, too. You've got nothing holding you here. What if I said I could...get you away from this place?"

Now, Sharon raised an eyebrow. "Sorry. I don't leave town with strange men for fun. You're looking for some of the ladies in the bar down thataway."

"For God's sake. I'm trying to help you."

"Great." Sharon said. "What if I don't want help? What if I said I'd find my own way out?"

"Then I might believe you." The man said. "If I didn't know for a fact that the asshole you're living with is beating the crap out of you morning, noon and night. That every Friday you hole up with a beer and get absolutely plastered. That you're gonna graduate high school, with good grades, and wind up dead on the road somewhere cause you're got nowhere else to go." His face softened. "You can't always find your own way out. Sometimes you've got to grab a hand...even if you bite it afterward."

Sharon turned to face the ocean. "I don't want to talk to you anymore."

Even though she couldn't see him, she knew the man shrugged. "Whatever." He said. The sand crunched softly as he turned to walk away. Sharon listened to it for about five seconds before she turned around. The spark of hope was too precious to just squish out.

"Hey, wait!" She called. "What if I change my mind? What would happen?"

The man was almost to the bluff again, and he didn't take a step closer. He shouted, or so she thought. It might have been a whisper, but she could hear it clear as day. "I might come back. After you've had some time to think."

"What's your name?" The man sounded as if he was hesitating...she suddenly couldn't make out his form all that well, anymore.

"Pete Hooker." He yelled, and then the wind rose.

Sharon nodded, and then the wind got fiercer. When she looked up again, the man was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

The door opened with a loud, long, creak. Sharon raised her head from her study of the floorboards to meet the eyes of a tall, slender girl with wheat-colored hair. Her deep blue eyes were like…like the ocean was supposed to be in movies. Sharon was stunned. People weren't this beautiful in Gloucester. _Nothing_ was beautiful in Gloucester.

"You must be Sharon." The girl said, in a voice that had clear, even tones. "I'm Liz—Elizabeth Franklin. C'mon in." The door opened wider, and Sharon hesitantly stepped in, bending down to unlace her shoes for the benefit of the hardwood floor. Elizabeth stood silently by her side as Sharon completed the task, and smiled kindly as Sharon got up.

"So I heard you just moved up here." Elizabeth said. "From Carmen."

"Carmen made it sound like you knew I'd be here already." Sharon said, curious.

"Well, I hear a lot of what goes on. It's like a small town up on the bluff…we're pretty separate from the rest of the island."

Sharon thought about Gloucester. Everyone had hated her there, just because she liked to look out for herself. People there, those morning-housewives in particular, didn't understand pride. They thought that if someone offered to butt in on your problems and fix your life for you, you ought to immediately drop all pretenses of perhaps justified superiority and cry to the heavens your gratitude. Sharon had thought it was all a bunch of bull. Hence, she had been quite the black sheep in the tiny fishing town. "Yeah, I know what that's like."

"Well, it's a little different here." Elizabeth said. "For reasons I'm sure you'll find out. What kind of tea do you like?"

"Oh, whatever you've got." Sharon said, not wanting to reveal that to her, tea was tea. A bizarre proposition in New England, to be true, but in Gloucester, among her step-father's friends, the refined knew the difference between Southern Comfort and Jack Daniel's. One did not waste their time discerning the merits of liquids without alcohol.

"I'll just go with the orange spice, then." Liz said. "The kitchen's this way…Carmen is in there, too." Elizabeth led Sharon down a dark, cramped, narrow corridor hung with what looked like old paintings. You could hardly see them in the dark. Obediently, Sharon followed.

The kitchen was beautiful. In all of the houses Sharon had been in before, a kitchen was just that: a room for preparing food. This kitchen looked far more lived in. With its dark-red walls and huge brick walk-in hearth, the look was one of warmth and a happy home. Flowers hung upside-down from nails in the wall, and some sprays of white flowers that smelt almost unnaturally sweet graced the mantle above the hearth. The table was small and intimate, and even the spice rack looked like a piece of living history, art as well as something that served a practical purpose.

"Well, this is our kitchen. Sorry it isn't as clean as it could be." Liz said, rummaging through the cupboards for a box of tea and a teapot, which she put on the more modern gas-range.

"It's beautiful in here." Sharon said wonderingly, not being able to think of much more to say about it. This felt like a place where anyone would be, bizarrely enough, welcomed and loved. She could picture roasting chestnuts in that hearth, relaxing here on Sunday mornings...like the girls were already her best friends.

Liz smiled. "I think so too. I love this room, more than any other in the house. Kitchens were like the family rooms back in puritan times, you know. That's the original front door of the house." She said, pointing behind her. Sharon examined it and saw that was indeed made of a heavier wood, and through the kitchen window could see a path leading outside. Liz turned away from adjusting the heat, back towards Sharon. "Carmen and I have been on our own for awhile. Or, it seems like it. Adults here just kind of leave us to our own ends, you might say. We stock and keep the kitchen pretty much on our own--we're down here more often than we're in our bedrooms. I wonder where she is..." She said, her voice trailing off as she sought the honey, the sparse tinfoil-wrapped lemon slices, and various other tea accoutrements.

Carmen popped out from around a corner; she must have just come down the stairs. "Hi there." She said, in a voice that was somehow simultaneously full of light and shadow. Her smile was sincere, and yet her eyes glimmered wickedly. "I see you've met Liz, Sharon. And vice-versa. Getting along well?"

Sharon tried to smile, not wanting to make a bad impression with her usual sulk. "We were talking about your house, actually. I've never seen anything like it."

Carmen laughed merrily, and Sharon paused for a moment just to listen to the music in the rich tones. "You've gotten on her good side already, then. Liz feels quite responsible for the house."

"If I don't take care of it, who will?" Liz asked sensibly. "Certainly not you." Carmen stuck out her tongue. "It's a beautiful old place."

"You won't catch me complaining." Carmen said. "I never have to do dishes."

"That's because you break them." Liz said pertly. The teapot began to whistle. Elizabeth retrieved a potholder and brought the tea over to the table. The fingers of her other hand encircled the handles of three delicate teacups. "The best china." She said, and smiled.

"Oh?" Sharon asked, looking at the beautiful little cup. Like everything else in the kitchen, it was beautiful and old-fashioned. It looked like it had been carved from bone hundreds of years ago, or shipped packed in tissues from London, or something.

"Don't believe it. Garage sale, two dollars." Carmen said. Liz rolled her eyes.

"It's my mother's, actually. But she's given it all to me. Sort of." Liz explained.

"She means it's somewhere between given and taken. Liz's mom isn't...too right in the head. So you might say." Liz shot Carmen a _look_. Sharon shivered.

"Something like that." Liz said, and for a second those beautiful blue eyes looked irreconcilably sad, as if they had done something that really couldn't be helped, but that had been necessary.

"I understand." Sharon said, looking down at her orange-brown tea. There had been times when Mom was so drunk she just wouldn't get out of bed. It hadn't been the same as her step-father though. Sharon hadn't blamed her mom for drinking--she drank for a reason. The asshole drank from habit. Sharon hated talking to her step-father, and the thought of him touching her mom made her wants to puke her guts up. So she had let her mom be sick. It was better than making her mom stay awake.

Liz nodded almost imperceptibly, as if she could see from the inside Sharon's eyes that yes, she did know.

There was a silence for the following few minutes, almost as if everyone was trying to think of another topic simultaneously. Sharon had never liked those awkward silences, but that was mainly because those silences had come during tea-times with Gloucester mothers who expected her to say something very different from what she actually wanted to say. In this comfortable kitchen, with these nice girls, Sharon wouldn't have minded being silent forever, just absorbing the feeling of acceptance in the air.

"So what kind of stuff do you like to do, Sharon?" Carmen asked, neatly breaking into the silence in a murmuring tone that didn't disrupt the peaceful feeling.

"I..." for some reason, Sharon didn't want to tell these girls the normal lies she told the Gloucester women. Nothing about studying, studying, studying, or helping her parents a lot of the time, at which point the women had always met eyes somewhere beyond Sharon's head, sharing a knowing glance. "I like to run." She said, her face kind of dreamy at this hereto-unknown prospect of telling the truth. "In Gloucester, I used to run on the beach all the time. Maybe I can do that here, too."

Carmen made a face. "The beach...now that I can understand." She said with a wink in Liz's direction that must have been a reference to some past event. Liz sighed and glanced heavenward. "But running? Not that I'm lazy, but I never imagined the process as being one of pleasure. Explains why you're so skinny, though." She said, glancing pointedly at Sharon's size-three waist.

Sharon laughed bitterly. "Actually, the paunch I got from my mom. Super-high metabolism. I faint sometimes if I haven't had anything to eat."

Carmen pursed her lips and sipped her tea as if to hide her expression. "Bitch." She said, but smiled to alleviate any pain. Sharon was startled into her first genuine laugh in months, and had to swallow carefully to avoid getting tea in her nose.

"Right back 'atcha." Sharon said in return. Liz giggled. "No, but I run because it feels like flying. Like..." She though of trying to explain the feeling of emulating the pattern to them, but didn't. "Like it's what I'm supposed to do."

Liz chuckled. "I don't think Carmen has ever done a single thing she was supposed to do, if she could help it."

"I'm helpful!" Carmen exclaimed, and looked a little cross. "Old ladies across the street, campfire girls, that's my thing. Benefiting your fellow man."

"I didn't mean that." Liz said, looking almost thoughtful. "I meant, like doing what your parents told you to. The obedient daughter and all."

Carmen snorted. "Like you're one to talk. And I don't because most of the time, they're wrong. I have my own set of morals...I don't need to follow anyone else's like a sheep. I help my people, and they help me, and everything's worked out fine so far, I'd say."

"Ah, yes. The clan matriarch." Liz said, slightly sarcastically.

Carmen howled with laughter. "I'm no mother. Kids are absolutely beyond me. They're not even interesting till they're five or so, and I have no patience for runny noses and stinky diapers and occasional cuteness."

Liz's face seemed almost to clarify, and Sharon thought she could have sworn that her eyes turned a bluer blue. "A pity, since your role percludes so much motherhood."

Carmen narrowed her eyes and didn't say anything for thirty seconds while the silence got more and more profound. Since her statement, Liz hadn't spoken either, and Sharon was content to just watch the drama unfold. "You," She said to Sharon, without turning to look at her, her concentration focused on the strangely-still Elizabeth, "have just witnessed one of the things that makes us on Crowhaven Road the freaks of New Salem."

Now it was Sharon's turn to throw back a skeptical look of her own. "What?" She asked, only slightly confused. The fact that she confused only slightly worried her more than the fact of the confusion.

"Liz tells the future, sometimes. Always in situations most inconvenient. In a few seconds she'll come to and it's our job to tell her what she said." Carmen finally turned to face Sharon. "Welcome to Crowhaven Road. You in?"

Sharon paused, and nodded. "Yeah, sure. I've done stranger things than baby-sit a clairvoyant."

Carmen grinned. "Not yet...but stick with us kid, and I'm sure you will."

There had always been two kinds of summer days in Gloucester: nice and not-so-nice. Though Sharon's terminology for living in Gloucester might seem to be simplistic and childish, when explored, those words offered all of the rarefied options that either of those kinds of days revolved around.

For instance: Smell. On nice days, the smell was of the ocean and the breeze and the sand, a sort of warm laziness and yet sharp mobility that allowed Sharon to remember all of the good things about living in the tiny fishing town, of which there weren't many. The determination, for one thing. Never mind the nosy housewives: the town in itself seemed to have a sturdiness, an idea that they would survive on their own no matter the struggle.

Maybe the nosy fisherwives were a flip side of the coin, a hand that desperately wanted to help those less fortunate since no one had helped them in their own less fortunate times. Sharon started to see this point of view during the nice days in August, of which there was a decided minority. She began to be...not grateful, but empathetically appreciative that at least the people here cared, even if Sharon personally chose to renounce the physical embodiments of that care.

During the not-so-nice days, the smell was one of depression and alcohol and dead things, combined with a robotic sort of helplessness that wasn't really a smell. On these days, the wives didn't approach her house, and if Sharon ran into them on the street when walking home from school, the greeting in their eyes was all the same-- "Oh, it's _her_ again," no matter their outward cheer. On these days, Sharon was free to ponder what the real problem with Gloucester, and hence the problem with her living in Gloucester, actually was. Gloucester was a place no one _really_ wanted to be. You always got there through some sort of bad luck; by birth or by marriage or by finance. It wasn't even a second choice that people could accept with a sort of half-hearted cheer. It was the New England version of a ghetto, the sort of place you end up living in if any of your other options couldn't possibly be any better.

In Sharon's case, she discovered, the bad luck had come really on her mother's behalf. Her mom had apparently grown up in a nice enough neighborhood, and then somehow had gotten stuck down here. Sharon scrounged in the dusty old attic and in the packed-up cases of her mother's things that still smelled of moth balls, and found an item precious beyond imagining: a photo album. Pictures of her mother when she was young, playing on the beach or in flower gardens or on front lawns. There were other pictures of what Sharon assumed to be other places in the geographic area where her mother had grown up: the houses were all the same, big sturdy New Englanders with a sort of Cape Cod-Boston flavor, looking much dilapidated by the years. As far as Sharon could tell, there was only a one-lane road going between the two long rows of houses, which must have been up on a bluff overlooking that beach she saw so often in these photos.

The lady that Sharon assumed to be her grandmother, the woman who was always with the gleeful curly red-haired baby, looked stern and severe, wearing large hats to keep the sun out her eyes and holding the child up for photos dressed in immaculate outfits. She was never on the beach with the baby however; that task fell to a slightly-wilder looking man with a mustache who Sharon assumed must be her grandfather. As the baby got older, though, the pictures of grandparents fell away, and pictures of friends began to replace them.

Sharon scanned all of the latter pictures eagerly, examining the faces and eyes and hair, trying to find a picture of her father. She found a picture of what could have been a young Pete Hooker...the man's face had that hard set to it, with the large nose and dark eyes, and the hair could have been blonde. The photos were all black-and-white, of course, but the likeness was fair. The-Pete-Hooker-esque-guy was commonly pictured with two or three other boys--a studious looking one with dark hair, one that looked kind of wild with longish red hair, and one with bone-straight dark hair and high cheekbones, skinny and severe. If Sharon had to place a bet on her lineage, she'd go for the skinny one, hands down. But there wasn't a single picture of her mother and him together to cement the idea. It was hugely frustrating.

Towards the end of the album there was a solitary portrait of the skinny guy, a couple years after all the group photos had been taken. Some of the photos had her mother's writing on the back. It was how she had found out the location of all these houses as Crowhaven Road, New Salem. Some pictures had nothing at all. But usually, if there was writing on the back, her mother would make some sort of the comment-- "Greg and the whole group," that sort of thing. The portrait only had, "Mark, 1953." And that was it.

No telling how this town looked now, of course. She'd be hanging out with the kids of all of these people, so now matter how nice they all looked in the photographs, their kids could be complete and utter bastards. All isolated up there on the bluff like that, if she didn't like them, she'd be stuck. And yet, there might be _chances_ up there. The idea of chances, of hope, of places beyond Gloucester, infused a golden sparkle in her chest. She might be able to go to a place where a school was actually nearby, with people who cared about _her_ and not her personal problems. The chance might be small...but there was a chance.

And something else that the alternately nice days and not-so-nice days during her last months in Gloucester made her realize; like a ladybug, she had this itch to throw off her shell. She was too old for this place, for the people that thought they could run her life, too mature. She had to get out, and it looked like there was only one place to go. Seeing that picture of Pete Hooker--well, it at least looked legit. And what choice did she have? Even if she wound up dead on the roadside because he turned out to be a small-town boy gone crazy, it had to be better than this life that was not a life, hope frozen before it sparked.

She went to school with the same zeal she always had, which wasn't much. These teachers weren't looking to inspire Sharon; they were looking to cram as much necessary information as possible into her schooling before she inevitably dropped out like the rest of the girls. Out of a high school of seven hundred, the graduating class was a whopping fifteen percent of that.

The change to her life, after she decided definitely to go with Pete Hooker whenever he came around again, was the sense of suspense, the waiting. It wasn't like it was keeping her on the edge of her chair--he and New Salem weren't as desirable as all that. But now that her life had a glimmer of hope, she was willing to fight to the death to keep it. She began to avoid her stepfather with a sort of actual determination, as opposed to the apathetic dislike she had used to edge away from him before. She had hardly seen him since the summer had started. Now summer was drawing to a close, and she was almost beginning to enjoy life again.

She had tempted fate a little bit by stealing a beer from her stepfather's private fridge, but it was too nice out here, in the blue dusk with the nice-smelling-air and the fireflies not to celebrate in some fashion. Pop had crashed before the sky had grown dark, going out again to hunt the elusive swordfish in the pre-dawn, which was why she felt safe in stealing the booze--she wasn't in the mood any more these days to really risk her neck. And then she smelled it. Cigarette smoke.

She went to the edge of the porch and tried to see, peering into the twilight, but the medium blue of the earlier dusk had faded to a deep prussian color, full of mystery, that the stars weren't quite showing through yet. But look, there was the moon, just rising now, a silvery beacon on the horizon. If she tilted her head back and looked just the right way...

Her eyes fell directly on to Pete Hooker.

"So we meet again." He said. He took out his cigarette to do it, though. There was something careful and interested in the gesture, almost as if he didn't want to offend her--or scare her off. Sharon determined in an instant that she would act precisely as if nothing in the world could scare her, and lifted her chin regally.

"Ha." He said, without a chuckle. "You've changed." His eyes, as dark a blue as the night sky now, studied her. "Or maybe you haven't. Maybe you just learned to use what you've already got."

"Could we get to the point, please?" Sharon asked quietly, and for a second Pete's eyes looked startled, innocent. He looked off into the distance.

"Maybe we could." He said. Something strange was happening to Sharon though, that made her wonder if she had heard the words at all. An impression was coming into her head, almost an image, like a whisper just barely heard somewhere behind and above her head. The words, _Does she know how much she sounds like her mom? Nah...even if she did, she'd block it out._ Was that what he was thinking? Could she hear his thoughts?

"I sound like my mom, huh?" Sharon asked, staring off into another part of the night. This time it looked as if Pete was trying to pretend he hadn't heard her. But finally he ran a hand through his windblown hair and replied.

"Yeah, you do." He said. "Looks like no one had to worry about you...the blood leaks through, every time."

Sharon's brow wrinkled. "Blood? What do you mean?" She leaned against one of the porch's posts. "Is it something to do with my dad?"

"Kind of." Pete said, and seemed reluctant to tell her. "How much do you know?"

"His name was Mark." Sharon said. "He looked like me. Or, more like me than mom did."

"Both right." Pete affirmed. "How'd you find out?"

"I found an old photo album of my mom's. And I guessed."

"Ought look through those old papers some more. You might find some interesting stuff." Pete said, as the cigarette burned itself down to his strangely still fingers.

"Like what?" Sharon asked sharply. "If you know, you could tell me. I'm kind of tired of these games. Seems to me like I've had them played on me my whole life."

"Played with you. Not on you. It's an important difference." Pete said. "I'll tell you, but you won't believe me."

"Try me." Sharon said, taking another swig of her beer and moving to the front steps for a more opposing position.

"Okay." Pete said, in a devil-may-care voice. "But don't forget you asked for it." He crushed the cigarette out on Sharon's concrete front walk, and leaned against the porch rail on the side of the stairs opposite from Sharon. Sharon stood up to meet his eyes immediately, goading him on.

"So. You probably already knew this, but your mom grew up, with me and a couple other folks, on an island called New Salem. It's north of here...you go up this old highway and over a bridge to it."

"It's got beaches."

"An island oughta. Can I finish?" Sharon was silent.

"Your mom and dad never got married." Sharon choked on her mouthful. When she recovered, she wasn't angry, just a little exasperated that God had seen fit to place this on top of everything else.

"Great." Sharon said.

"That's important." Pete said, and then he waited until Sharon had coughed a little bit and was back to about normal.

"Oh? I'm just dying to hear how." Sharon said stonily.

"Good." Pete said, right on cue. "I'll tell you. They never got married because of your mom's family. They were rich old bastards. They wanted her to marry someone else, and she refused. She fell in love with your dad, had you, and then your dad died. It...wasn't a pretty picture."

"What'd he die of?" Sharon asked, and got only silence as her reply.

"Oh, for God's sake. I can know that, can't I?" She asked sharply. "It might be important or something."

Pete's lips turned down as he thought about it. Finally, he shook his head.

"No. It's better this way. You'll find out when you're meant to. But he's dead. Trust me on that one."

Sharon hiked an eyebrow. "Do you often have people mistrusting you about the accuracy of other's deaths?" Pete just shrugged.

"I've been doing this for awhile. Going around, trying to find folks that are lost. I wouldn't hold it against you...but I'm telling you, it's true. It's a bumpy road you got to go down, kid. It'll just be easier if you trust me." Sharon said nothing, but Pete ignored her attempt to place awkwardness in the conversation and plowed right on ahead.

"It was a confusing time, maybe that's a better way to put it. Anyway, in the mess, your mom's family denounced her, the rest of us got scattered, and I guess she found your stepfather. I'll never say she fell in love with him--" And the tone in his voice was dark with hated when he said the word, "but he probably wined her and dined her and acted romantic. She was always a sucker for that kind of thing, and she was so pretty guys were after her all the time."

"I'm so glad to know that. Raises her so much higher in my eyes." Sharon said sarcastically, and Pete looked at her, the ice in his eyes now pinning her to the porch.

"Hush it. You don't know anything, and you won't, ever, if you don't shut up and listen. You've got a smart mouth." But Sharon was too stubborn to give anything even related to an apology, ticket-out-of-Gloucester or not. "Lots of people liked your mom. And not just because she was pretty. I just wanted you to know that when she wound up here, she wasn't trying to hurt you. I thought that might be important to you. That's all."

"And after that?" Sharon asked. "You were just slumming in Gloucester and caught sight of me? Traced my utility bills? What?"

"Kind of." Pete said. "I had letters from your mom for awhile...we used to talk about a lot of stuff. She told me she was marrying this fisherman. I hunted around with her surname. It helped that you weren't registered for anything under your stepfather's name."

"Mom didn't want me to be. She was so insistent, even though he smacked her for it."

"He would hit her?" Pete asked, intensely.

Instantly, Sharon knew she had gone too far. Some things were not meant to be told. "Yeah. When he was real drunk."

Pete's gaze shifted to the upstairs windows. "Bastard oughta burn in hell."

"You knew he hit me, last time you came. You think she was so different? You think she was everyone's precious darling, the way she was yours? Some people don't want to cherish nice things, you know. Some people just want to destroy them!" Sharon said, and quickly looked the other way, wiping her face with the back of her hand as a stubborn tear ran down her cheek. Pete's hand descended to envelope her thin shoulder, and Sharon gasped and moved away from it.

"Not everyone is out to hurt you, kid." Pete said.

"Well, excuse me if I've turned up all the bad pennies. It's not my fault." Sharon said.

"Yeah. I know what that's like." Pete said, and then he was silent for a minute. "So...now that you've heard...want to come with me? To New Salem?"

Sharon held her breath. It was her dearest hope. But he didn't need to know that. "Dunno. Who would I live with, now that both my parents are dead? Mom's family? They didn't want me then...why should I live with them now?"

"I found a place." Pete said. "At first I thought I could maybe put you in with your cousin's family--"

"I have cousins?" Sharon asked, in shock.

"Yeah, you do. A lot of them, actually. Second cousins and third cousins and removed cousins...the whole bit. But anyway. Fact is, your first cousin is being raised by his grandpa, and it wouldn't really be fair to foist a teenage girl on the old geezer. So I thought you could live with my kids."

"_Your_ kids?" Sharon asked in surprised. "What, you fathered a conclave? Like the lost boys?"

Pete laughed. "Only one's mine, actually. My daughter Linda. But I hardly ever see them, so you wouldn't have to worry about running into me. Her and her half-brother David live with their mom. She's real sweet. She said she'd take you in."

"She would? When she's not even my family?" Sharon asked skeptically. And what kind of man, thought the genie in the back of her mind, talked about his own wife/ex-wife/lover in such a patronizing tone? _Real sweet? Excuse me, hun, but you've already got two kids...want one more? Thanks, you're such a sweetie. _And then Sharon had to stifle a giggle because that sentence captured Pete's personality perfectly: straightforward, tough if he had to be, with a tortured sort of kindness that the world had done it's best to stamp out. And it was still trying.

"If I were you, I wouldn't be putting much trust in the direct family bonds at this point, seeing what they've already done for you." Pete continued, pointing out. "And if you want to get technical, the whole bluff, our people, descended from the same eighty folks or so, three hundred years back. We're all related in there _somehow_. Leslie is real nice. You don't have to worry about her."

"Well." Sharon said. "I guess it's a deal then. When?"

"When do you want to go? Need any time to pack up your stuff?"

Sharon thought. "He's going off on a fishing trip again. If I'm conveniently gone when he leaves, I can pack my stuff during the day. If you could come get me tomorrow night, it'd be great."

"Wonderful." Pete said, and though he didn't smile, his eyes did brighten. "It's a plan."

"I guess...thanks, then." Sharon said, not grudgingly, but with the rust of someone who hasn't said the words for so long, having drowned in an ocean of enforced self-sufficiency.

"No Problem." Pete said, tossing off this gesture of gratitude-for-gratitude in a beautifully nonchalant way. It was everything Sharon had ever hoped for…to be able to say thank you and not have someone respond to it as if were ridiculously important or ridiculously unimportant. Pete's 'no problem', was utterly free of social constructs, of debts, of mental games. A favor, and a thank you. That was it. It was fresh air after cloying smog and perfume. Sharon was startled into stillness for a moment, so much that she almost didn't comprehend his next sentence--"See you later, Sharon. Tomorrow at Dusk."

The rest of Sharon's metamorphosis hadn't been particularly exciting. She had avoided the house until 6 am or so, until she was sure Pops was gone. She had skipped school that day, taken all the boxes of her mom's things from her attic and piled up her own stuff into a haphazard arrangement, tying it into bundles due to the absence of empty boxes. Pete had been true to his word: as the sky first started to shade into dusk, he drove a gigantic black Ford up to her house, and they had loaded it in silence for twenty minutes. When they were done, Sharon leaned against the car for a minute, looking back at that house that had compromised so many years of alternately happiness and hell. But the one person that had given her that happiness was gone now, and wasn't coming back. She was freed by the existence of her sentence, in a way.

"Wanna burn it?" Pete asked nonchalantly, as he lit another cigarette, leaning against the car with her.

Sharon chuckled. "It'd be a nice surprise for the old boy when he comes home from his trip." She pondered the idea. "But no. I'm leaving with a clean slate."

"Smart kid." Pete said, and went around the other side, got in the car and started the engine.

Sharon got in the passenger seat and from that moment on, did not look back.

"Welcome back." Carmen said, as soon as the disoriented look in Liz's eyes cleared. "You said, and I quote, 'A pity, since your roles percludes so much motherhood.' What the hell does 'percludes' mean?"

"I'm sorry, Sharon." Liz said, almost frantically, ignoring Carmen completely. "It's...just this weird thing..."

"I told her." Carmen broke in impatiently. "Sharon's cool: she doesn't care. Come on, what does 'percludes' mean?"

Liz sighed wearily. "It's like...will have to include. Permissary inclusion."

Carmen seemed to take this in, nodding slowly. "Okay. So my 'role', whatever the hell that is, will have to include motherhood. God, Liz, sometimes I really wish I could just pass you off as a nut." But it was said cheerfully. No matter what was said, these girls had a friendship that was bonded in likeness. If one were to be crazy, surely she would find the same issues in her second cousin.

"I'm sure I wish I could, too." Liz said, a little sarcastically, a little pityingly. "Maybe you'll marry a preacher man and wind up with twenty bouncing baby boys."

The images this made in all their minds was hilarious, and when Carmen snorted incredulously, it became a reason for more laughter in and of itself. The three girls were pounding the table and almost upsetting the teacups before the levity ran its course.


	4. Chapter 4

__

1969, Mabon

She'd met him at a party. Well, that wasn't exactly true. Technically, they had known each other for all of their lives. Their mothers had probably known each other at some time or another, though Carmen's mother was an _artiste_ and Grant's mother was long dead. Maybe dead: no one knew, and Grant had never invited the questions.

But the party was where she would always remember meeting him. It had been the pulsing rock music that had raped the blood vessels of everyone in the room, it had been the smell of sweat and wine coolers and the sheer luxury of cool night air in panting lungs. It was everything at the end of the spectrum, a merge of lust and divinity, but nothing approaching any sort of equilibrium. It was that hot, excited mindset she had been in when she had first looked at Grant with eyes that weren't innocent. It was the moment she had first imagined Grant's legs twining around her own when she had first come into contact with an entirely new and primal part of herself. She had seen him in his tight blue jeans, seen his bare chest and black devil's trail of hair, seen the faint trace of sweat on his brow and the sub-zero temperatures in his golden eyes, and wanted from him what she had never wanted from any boy in her life before.

She caught his eyes from across the room and gravitated toward him, never remembering how she had moved so quickly or who she must have pushed out of the way. But she stood in front of him, her ice-blue eyes directly meeting his own flame-gold, and watched as he reviewed her. She bit the inside of her cheek, and the corner of Grant's lips twitched.

"Wanna dance?" She asked. Her eyes implied that there was more than one kind of dancing that would be done tonight.

Grant shrugged with one shoulder, and Carmen, moved by some force she couldn't identify, found the sheer guts to smooth back his damp hair with her cool fingers, moving to the shell of his ear and down his cheek and neck. He stayed still, unimpassioned as she did this, but when she had finished, those golden eyes were definitely shining in a different way than they had been before. "Sure." He breathed, and they moved off into a private corner. The outsider kids, not sure whether they were going to dance or fuck or explode, kept a safe distance away from them.

Later that night, her halter-top and miniskirt would have been easy enough to remove, though they didn't bother with such formalities. She had gone back to Crowhaven Road in his car, and there on the beach, Carmen's favorite place in the world, with only the moon and stars to witness, Carmen moaned wildly into Grant's mouth as he became a living flame inside her. Afterwards, they talked earnestly in the moonlight.

"Nothing seems real," Grant had said, his golden eyes dark brown in the stark shadows. "You know what I mean? Like everyone's pretending there's something there. Like false hope. I see it in their eyes, all over the place. We're the same, you and me, Carmen." And at this, he had turned to run his thumb over her cheek, almost emulating the gesture she had done before, at the party. "Refugees from a torn-up world."

Carmen's eyes shined with tears. She sniffed, in a futile gesture to hold them in, but her eyes spilled over. "Yes." She whispered. She bit her lip. "It's _people_ that matter, not places or things. No one else I know ever understood that."

His large hand closed on her shoulder, and this time he untied her halter-top and put it gently on the sand.


	5. Chapter 5

It was cold out, but not too cold. Chilly for September, though, with no humidity to shelter them from the cold air. The snap had moved in suddenly yesterday, and where before the sticky air felt warm, like sweat molecules floating around, now it had everybody reaching for gloves and scarves. It was just cold enough to provoke the constant sniffle James often had during the winter. Something to do with allergies, the doctor had said. Some obscure type of ragweed. Damn it all.

James was on the beach, walking. Notably, it was colder there than it was up on the shore, but James felt a weird sort of kinship to the ocean on days like this, enough to make him want to skip school. He glanced back up at his house, one of the last on the bluff. It wasn't, after all, like his father was going to make him go. He'd rather remark on the obscure differences between Royal Crown and Canadian. That is, if he hadn't passed out yet.

The ocean wasn't blue today. Rather it was like a mixture of blue, green and gray, with the yellow foam flying in droplets like some oily kind of sludge. The ocean looked mean, James thought. Truly full of emotion and unbridled power, the way it's supposed to be. Not a blue happy pool, content to let the birds shit in it and the animals die in it and the humans pollute in it. Maybe if the ocean could show its feelings more, the outsiders would realize it wasn't a good idea to cross it. Maybe...

But it was all pointless. The elements could never get up and talk, after all. They were just there, staring and watching day after day, like the sky. And even if sometimes the whole world seemed to spin up in anger, it was never enough. The outsiders never noticed. And they never would. All they had was the kids up at Crowhaven Road to tell them their heads from their asses, and they wouldn't even listen.

James looked longingly out at the ocean. Someday, he thought. If it takes forever, my whole life, someday, those stupid outsiders are gonna know. They'll know that they can't just walk obliviously through anymore, tossing stuff wherever they want. They'll realize how stupid they were, and then they'll want to change. They'll have to.

James knelt down by the edge of the ocean, having seen something glint in the sparse light offered by the swirling clouds above. A different sort of glint than the sea foam flying all over the place. His heart began to beat faster, and he had no idea why. Look, there it was again. A black sort of glint on the waves, almost like oil, rushing in and swirling and congealing on the sand. What the hell was that?

There hadn't been any oil spills lately. Maybe this was some sort of organic material, dead plant matter or something. Or maybe...

Hazy memories came back to James. Of dank and dusty afternoons in the attic, his father snoring in a blissful drunken stupor on the couch. Afraid that even a wrong step on a floorboard would make a creak that would wake up the monster, James unearthed and unlocked old document boxes. Inside them were correspondences, plans, letters. A map, in particular, a map of some islands off the south shore. One of them in particular was described in spiky, precise handwriting at the bottom of the page.

__

"A bare island and sandy, but with no trees to show the blowing of the wind. Rocks underneath the surface of the sand, where boats before have met their doom. The skull is protected, buried in sand, and that will do for the time being. But should I ever require it of thee, Seth, thou shalt break the curse upon the island and then break the curse upon the sand. Both shall fight thee mightily, as I have told them to do, but with strength in your convictions, you will succeed. It is buried a foot deep, perchance, and the tide rushing in on the island keeps it damp daily. But allow me to assure, you, Seth, that if ever you touch the skull lacking my expressed command and direction, I will see to it that you and your children and your children's progeny will all burn in the blackest heart of hell."

The black oily sludge could only mean one thing. And though James was afraid, he knew it was time to try. The letter had obviously come from a man far more powerful than he could ever imagine, but right now, James knew he would understand. And he wasn't doing it without permission, really. All the permission he needed was washing in on the beach, and, James would bet, was making the air cold, too. It would have been cold at the bottom of the sea for so long.

Yes, James thought, as he headed for the bluff again, finger some of the oily material between his fingers. The human race was about to have a lesson it would never forget.


	6. Chapter 6

"The evil comes." Maeve Howard said, her eyes drawn-in and blank and far away. Audibly, breath hissed around the room.

"Put it out," Delia Franklin said. "Put out the candle, and she'll stop saying those awful things--"

"No, Delia." Constance Burke said from the corner, catching Delia's eye. "We can't. We must know more."

Delia moaned, a scared, nervous sound, and looked away from Leona.

"Maeve..." Leona called, her voice also sounding as if it came from far away, from somewhere beyond the abyss, the curtain that human eyes are not meant to see beyond. "Maeve, tell us what you see. The evil comes. What else?"

Maeve stirred restlessly in her chair, her eyes flashing around the room, from the candle flame to the floor to the ceiling and back. She howled, a sound like a desperate wild animal.

"He's coming. The evil is coming. It's more--It's worse--It's horrid. Than anything..._anything_!" Maeve hunched her shoulders and curled her body into a ball and began to rock back and forth on the floor. "Nothing can stop him, nothing _wants_ to stop him. Nothing will help, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, _nothing_--"

"Maeve." The voice was calm, cool and collected, punching through Maeve's impending hysteria. "You must tell us more. No, listen to me. We need to know. The evil is coming. What does it look like? What will it do? How can we stop it?"

Maeve laughed hysterically. "You can't stop it. He's just another pretty face, another pretty face. Pretty, pretty, pretty. Pretty man with the broken home. He wants the power, the original power, and he'll do anything to get it. He's a _butcher_--"

"Do you see? Can you see what he does?" Leona asked sharply. "Can we recognize him by what he will do?"

"No. My sight blocks what he will do." Maeve swallowed. "No one can tell. His plan is different every time, you see. It has to be." Maeve nodded. "Oh yes, oh my, oh mercy me, that is what it has to be. By earth and air and fire and sea, that is what it has to be. He tricks them, again and again, always in a different guise. A trickster, a comic, but of the means most foul." Wide-eyed in the corner, Nell wrote down the words that came out.

"All right. Maeve, you need to listen to me closely. I need you to--" Leona started. In the middle of her sentence wind had crashed violently against the house and blown one of the old wooded shutters into the walls. The squeal of rusted hinges, the clash of anger wind and wood, and the house seemed to shake. Maeve woke up.

"What? What happened? Did it work?" Maeve asked. She rubbed her head. "I have the most infernal headache..."

"Yes. It worked. Almost." Leona said, her voice deep and quiet, almost deadpan. "You started to go a little crazy. You couldn't really tell us much. The evil is coming, he will trick us." Leona said, thinking about the words the not-Maeve had used. Maeve turned wide eyes on Leona.

"Well, then, we know, don't we? The evil is coming. We watch for something coming, something different..."

"But what sort of different?" Asked Leona tiredly. "The evil is coming and he will lead the lambs to slaughter. That we knew already from the crystal." Leona sighed. "I'm afraid we can't do this anymore. It's far too dangerous, and if we're not going to find anything out, I must forbid it." Maeve gazed at Leona steadily.

"But that's running away." Maeve said. "Like scared rabbits, Leona. There's nothing frightening in the dark if you just face it."

"There's plenty frightening in the dark, whether you face it or not." Leona snapped back. "It's foolish to think otherwise. And I'm not doing this out of fear, I'm doing this to keep you all safe. I don't like what we're meddling with, I don't like the things that are happening, and whatever you see, Maeve, write it down and we can discuss it. But channeling spirits...we're out of our league."

"I thought spirits were well within the realm of the crone." Constance said from across the room.

"Spirit are within the realm of the crone." Leona said, angrily. "But protection of the maiden and the mother is also her responsibility. No less than her duty. And we can't protect anyone if we're all dead. There has got to be a safer way to do this. I don't like to think of what might happen if someday that thing grabs hold of Maeve and doesn't let go. We're dropping it until we think of a safer way, and that's final."


	7. Chapter 7

"Come on. It'll just be some fun." Grant said. "A beautiful Saturday, lots of sunshine in the air--"

"Who else is going?" Marshall asked, putting away his books.

"James, you and me. We'll take some food or something. Come on, why not?" Grant said, trying to make this seem blasé. An everyday outing in an everyday little sailboat. As long as they got Marshall to come. After that, it didn't matter, they could drop this pretense like a rock. But Marshall had to be with them--James had insisted on that.

"Well..." Marshall said, looking outside at the clear, sunny day. "I've got a project to do, though." He said guiltily.

"You said yourself it's not due for a few weeks. Why not come with us? For old times sake?" Grant and Marshall used to be the best of friends when they were kids. But they had split up after Marshall decided to go to college and Grant had joined the Army. It had changed him. Growing up had changed all of them.

That got him. "Okay. For old times sake. What a guilt trip." Marshall said, and passing by Grant, punched him in the shoulder. Grant shoved him in the back and followed him to the kitchen.

"Okay, so what kind of food did you guys want to take? Or do you already have stuff?" Marshall asked. Grant shrugged.

"Dunno. Sandwiches. A few cokes. Apples or something. Who cares? I just want to get out and do something." He said.

"Okay." Marshall said, raiding the refrigerator for the things Grant has specified and tossing them in a canvas bag. Sandwich fixings, since Grant seemed to be anxious enough not to want to stay around and make anything. "All right. I'll get a sweater and we'll go. Where's James?" Marshall called, as he headed upstairs.

"Outside." Grant said. "Come on, what are you doing, knitting one up there?"

"I wanted the one Liz made me..." Grant rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine. I'm coming." Marshall said. He rushed downstairs, now wearing a white Irish-wool sweater. "Okay. We're off." With a mock salute, Marshall pointed toward the door. "Lead the way, captain."

"Damn straight." Grant said, yanking him out the door so quickly that Marshall took his arm back, scowling and rubbing his wrist. James stood in the middle of the street, sizing Marshall up with one chilly glance. Marshall stared right back for about two seconds, and then quickly found something in a nearby tree to look at: James had always freaked him out. It wasn't so much a fear of James as the fact that James had always seemed to have something subtlety _off _about him: even for the kids of Crowhaven Road, he was weird. Skinny and shorter than the rest of the boys, with dark curly hair that somehow seemed to absorb light instead of reflecting it. And his eyes—they either darted back and forth as if paranoid, or stared at you steadily with a fascination that seemed to swallow you whole. He sometimes reminded Marshall of a small, rabid, dog.

To add to Marshall's discomfort, no-one said a word until they were in the boat. For the half-mile down Crowhaven Road, Marshall tried to start conversation with Grant several times, but Grant always shushed or ignored him, until Marshall reluctantly got the point. They circled the headland and made their way to a weathered old dock at which a sailboat was tied. Nick, Charles, Grant and Marshall had all chipped in on it for numerous fishing trips, mainly defined by the imbibing of alcohol and 'guy talk'. James headed aboard first, and started rifling through what looked like an old-fashioned document box, while Grant did the rigging. Marshall stashed the bag of food in one of the cabinets and kept his peace, until James caught his eye with his bizarrely steady glance. James licked his lips quickly, and motioned Marshall over to where he was sitting. Marshall got up slowly, not at all eager to see what James was looking at.

Before he got there, James shut the box and smiled, slowly. Then he looked over Marshall's shoulder and spoke to Grant. "Are we ready to cast off?" He asked.

"Wind's right." Grant said.

"Of course." James said, as if this was only to be expected. Grant loosed the line, and James waited until the sailboat was about a hundred feet away from the dock before he spoke again.

"Very well, Marshall. Now you can see." He slid the document box over the sailboat's floor.

"You're a nut." Marshall said to James, as he flipped open the catches. "I can swim. No reason to wait this long. What is this, anyway? Porn?"

James looked as if he was about to choke. He said, in a strangled voice, "No. No, it's not. It was in my attic. It's been…passed down, over many generations."

"You think." Marshall said amusedly, as he rifled through the papers. "Could be some grandparent's cute idea of a joke. Paper rots in wet climate, especially given 300 years."

"That's what you think. He wouldn't have used ordinary paper. He wouldn't have left that to chance." James said quickly.

"Ri-ight…" Marshall said, with a long look at James. "Anyway, it's all pretty boring. No world secrets in here. Economic stuff. Apparently in the fall season of 1700, corn was a good crop…"

"You're looking at the wrong papers." James said. "There's a deed in there, to an island quite a ways north of here. It's actually off Cape Cod by a bit—it'll take awhile to get there, even if the wind picks up."

"Okay." Marshall said. "I got it. But there's nothing in these economic papers that show any development to it."

"That's the idea." James said. "Look at the bottom of the page."

"...It's written on." Marshall said, sounding a little confused. "Place of Rest, [some year]."

"Precisely. It was never supposed to be developed. It was never supposed to be _found_. It's the final resting place of Black John, one of the leaders of the original New Salem coven."

Marshall knew a little bit about the original New Salem coven, passed down through seedy old family stories. Supposedly they were all descended from the witches, the _real _witches, that had escaped the famous Salem Witch Trials. "So we're gonna go dig up a spook?" Marshall said, sounding slightly more interested. "But after 300 years, it might be human soup. Might be only bones." But the thrill of doing something forbidden was cool enough, though he wasn't going to tell James that.

"No bones are there. He actually died in a shipwreck, as you can find in another one of those papers. They had land interests in Europe that collapsed with the start of the American Revolution--Black John traveled a lot. One of those trips apparently didn't turn out so well...my ancestor wrote about it." James said, looking distanced and entranced.

"Then enlighten me as to why we're going there?"

"Because he _intended_ to use the island as a tomb. And because of that, these letters all point to the idea that he left several items there, several very powerful items..."

"The Master Tools?" Marshall asked skeptically. Now, that one he had heard about before. Back in the day, the witch covens had been matriarchies, except for the occasional male leader brought about by luck or power. But leadership of a coven often went to a descendant of a common mother, and down through the lines of nieces, sisters and cousins. Women, with their intuition, were viewed more fit than men for total leadership of a magic circle. And Marshall's grandmother, before she died, never failed to tell glory stories of the women witches of old, when they defeated some demon or tax collector with the help of having found items that rang with power and spoke to their soul. It was the female version of Marvel Comics; to rise up and defeat your enemies by superior strength of mind, body and will.

"Possibly." James murmured.

"They're just a kid's story." Marshall protested. Though he had overheard those stories again and again, and unwillingly the old memories rose up. "My grandmother used to talk about them...a bracelet that made any throw of the dagger true; a circlet that clarified and empowered the mind, a garter that brought strength of speed in flight and great connection with the earth--but it's all kid stuff."

"The fact that your grandmother knew of them shows they are not a kid story at all. It's oral tradition, that she probably got from Her grandmother, back and back and back. Where did we get our current traditions if they weren't passed down?"

"What traditions? I've never gone out naked and picked weeds--"

"Because in the 1920's, New Salem once again suffered from an attack by the town folk who suspected witchcraft. To teach their children the old ways would have aroused far too much suspicion. The old traditions have lay silent for three generations--but they're there. And the fact that it was your grandmother--not your mother, who told the stories, is right in keeping with these facts. And if you look in your family attic, I have no doubt you'll find diaries and documents to back this up."

Marshall was silent a moment. "So we're going into our parent's fairy-stories to find some ancient leader's mythical tools." _At least it'll be amusing, _Marshall thought. "Why now?"

At that, James smiled. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you--wait for it." And that was apparently all, at this point in time, that he wished to say. Marshall shook his head and sat back to absorb the wilderness of wind and water, until they got to their destination.

Their destination wasn't _that _far away. Only a forty-minute journey, far out enough in the ocean that the water was blue and it was probably fifty feet to the sandy bottom. And the interesting thing was, Marshall was fairly sure they _could_ have gotten there a lot faster. The water almost seemed to be against them, pushing their boat in the opposite direction. Finally, Marshall could see they were approaching a small island. Even from out here he could tell there wasn't a spot on it. It was your typical desert island, without even the graceful boon of a palm tree. There was a dinky cove, though. Marshall wondered if they could anchor and swim to the island, even in the cold, because he sure wouldn't like to try for that tiny thing if he were at the wheel.

Alas, no such luck. "Aim for the cove!" James called as they pulled in close. Grant nodded and turned his attention to curving the boat just right to sail nicely into the narrow inlet, and then came a surprise. The boat bucked and turned about ninety degrees from where Grant had aimed it. Now Grant spoke: "What in the heck...?" He looked back at James, who just shrugged.

Grant sighed and turned the wheel again, circling the boat around for another pass. Again the boat bucked, but this time violently enough for James to clutch his document box in fear and surprise. This time in turning back, the front end of the boat dipped warningly, and a little water got washed over the side of the boat in a sudden movement. It wasn't enough of a jilt to be dangerous; more like a big brother pushing his younger sibling just a little too hard in the chest, to convince the child to back off. This had been a warning.

Grant growled under his breath and circled the boat again, but before they could reach the point where the boat had bucked twice before, Marshall called out. "Don't do it, Grant. I don't think we're allowed." Marshall's senses all of a sudden seemed to be functioning on overdrive, supernatural elements that sent chills down his spine were falling neatly into place. "Could we maybe anchor the boat and swim for it?"

"Are you nuts?" Grant asked. "That water must be freezing at this time of year. It must be half a mile to shore. We couldn't bring any of our stuff, your precious sweater would get soaked--" An ironic glance as he said this, "And the small problem of, if these waters did that to the _boat_...what could they do to use, unprotected? No. We sail in or we don't go."

"We're going." James said, in a voice that was probably meant to state this as an unshakeable fact, but instead came out more like an insistant whine. "We have to. Try it again."

"I'm not bashing my boat to splinters." Grant said icily. "Any rougher and we'll roll. And if you fall out James, I am not rescuing you."

"Such perfect friendship." James said darkly. "Can you circle the island? Maybe there's another cove." Grant nodded, and as soon as he turned away from the little bay, the water instantly became more forgiving. But the rest of the island's coast was circular and smooth. To make things worse, the island wasn't even flat. The area of sea-level beach was minimal...two feet from the water, the sand shot straight up into a hill. They couldn't ground the boat without taking a serious chance on damaging it.

Marshall knew it was up to him to think of another workable solution before Grant got pissed again, since James didn't know the slightest thing about sailing. "Can we go in at a diagonal, maybe? Would you me able to get at the right angle that way? Maybe it's a...warm current or something." Marshall said, knowing the instant he said it was totally untrue.

"I could try." Grant said, sounding resigned. They headed toward the little cove at an angle, trailing the shore as close into the cove as they could. But it was the same situation: a half-mile from the bay on all sides, the water itself blocked them off. The boat bucked again, still more violently, but at least they didn't roll.

"Let me try something." James said quietly, and Marshall was so surprised by James volenteering anything at all that he didn't interfere. James went up to the front of the boat and climbed up onto the bow section, ignoring Marshall's suggestions that it might not be the smartest place to stand. James now stood two feet taller than them: impressive in itself, since he had started out the day a head shorter. As he threw his arms in the air and crooned his fingers like calling the sky to his attention, it almost seemed like a mantle of power settled upon him.

"Sea!" James cried. "In the name of my father and my father's father, this land was theirs and is thereby ours! You will obey our command, as we seek the remains of one of your most powerful masters! Let us pass!"

Marshall, in the scale of weird things today, was not all surprised to see the wind pick up and boat tilt at exactly the right position to dump James in the ocean. Grant's cold yellow eyes peered over the side.

"Finished, Merlin? I don't think you were well accepted." Grant said pertly as he threw a line overboard for James to grab. Grant and Marshall hauled the dripping boy in easily. As James sluiced his wet hair back from his face and shivered, his eyes were burning.

"Feel like going home yet?" Marshall inquired wickedly. James shook his head quickly.

"We can't. We have business. But I'm out of ideas." James said shortly, and looked down in a way that showed he didn't want to talk, at all. Marshall didn't blame him.

"So what do we do?" Grant said. "We can't anchor here, and we can't stay here. I need an idea and I need it now. I'm all for going back." But at that moment, something flashed in Marshall's head. James had had...almost the right idea. Like giving a password to the gate. The idea of getting in was for some reason now so intoxicating that all question of should had dropped out of his mind.

Despite the fact that now fog seemed to have moved in from nowhere on the clear day and was now shrouding the island in a mist so deep, Marshall wasn't sure Grant would even be able to find the island, much less steer the sailboat into the inlet? Well, brains had nothing to do with recklessness, after all. Recklessness had everything to do with a suicidal impulse meant to keep a handle on the world's population.

"No." Marshall said. "Circle for a bit, give me a minute to think." Grant sighed--he was obviously getting tired of circles, not that Marshall blamed him. As the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up, and not from the cold wind, words appeared in Marshall's mind. The same, yet different. A command, and yet an entreaty. James had had the wrong idea. Too _male_ of an idea, Marshall knew, which was weird since had never considered himself to be understanding of women. But the idea appeared in his mind, and would not be banished, that the Sea was a woman, and had to be wooed. A Call:

__

Air and Water, Wind and Sea,

As we will it, may it be.

Power calls from times of old,

In your bosom do enfold

Our quest for fate and knowledge.

Let us pass! oh, Demons deep,

For far beneath the Owner weeps,

And we are commanded to

Enact these Ancient Secrets.

Air and Water, Wind and Sea,

As we wish it, so mote it be!

Marshall murmured the words, and found in the minute it took to think about them (but not thinking, really, uncovering was more like it, like something buried in his mind from long ago) he had already memorized the small monologue, stranger passing stranger. He wasn't cocky enough to stand on the bow like James had…he had, after all, sailed this ship before and was not stupid enough to underestimate the power of the mighty element of the ocean in all her primal glory. But he could ask it. It was an idea. They were here in his cause, after all…John or whoever he was. There must be some way to break this stupid spell or James would never have gotten the idea in his damn head. James might be a little creep, but he was hardly an idiot.

He laughed, then, as an idea occurred to him. If he was going to think of the Sea as a female entity, as probably every sailor had for time immemorial, then why was he asked Her favors in such a lackluster manner? Seduction, that was the key. Parcel them rubies and diamonds, tell them they're beautiful, and they'll faint into your arms. Making demands to a woman would only get you slapped. He chuckled, because a significant portion of his outer self thought the idea genuinely bizarre, yet the inner part to himself, that strange intuition that had made up or uncovered that little poem, knew the truth of this idea and thrilled to it. All right, then. At least he couldn't look like any more of an idiot than James, unless the Sea took total offense to his proposition and rolled the boat on them. But he didn't want to think about the boat rolling. That would leave them stranded on a desert island, if they could even make it to the desert island. Okay. Begin.

He went all the way to the other end of the 30 foot schooner, knelt down so that his fingers were almost touching the water (but not actually touching. There was no quicker way to piss off a woman than to touch her when she didn't want to be touched,) and whispered the poem softly. He said the poem-command a second time, a little louder and with rhythmic intonation, crooning his fingers and his voice. He said it a third time, finally, almost singing it the tempo was so deep and slow. As he ended the final sentence, he wasn't quite sure when it had happened, but his fingers were in the water and he had slowly been stroking the surface of it. Curious, he ran his fingers a little distance over it, and the water rose to his fingers. His eyes widened, as the water made to his fingertips a tiny, lapping wave. He could almost hear the ocean purr. It was thoroughly disconcerting. But he had no illusions about what would happen if he left this spot on the boat now. So he called to Grant, softly.

"You better try and sail the boat through now. Quickly. And don't let James say a word."

"I wasn't planning on it." Grant said curiously, and instantly a snapping wind rose up to propel them through into the inlet. When they were safely in the little harbor and the anchor was dropped, Marshall was the last out of the boat and into the shallow water, his mind buzzing. "Thank you," he whispered, as he climbed up onto the beach with the rest of them.


	8. Chapter 8

__

1974, Late Autumn

"It's so cold out." Grace Calloway said, drawing the blanket even closer around her thin shoulders. Her black curls tumbled over the plaid pattern as she stared worryingly off the vantage-point of the porch. The dried leaves were being blown every which way down Crowhaven Road, and there would be frost on the windows in the morning, if not snow. It was the coldest autumn in decades, so the parents said. It wasn't even winter yet.

"Gracie? Do you want to go in?" A concerned voice, from higher up on the porch. Elizabeth Franklin, looking down from her rocking chair at Grace huddled against this fresh onslaught of wind. Alexandra Howard, used to Grace's tendency of fascination at beauty, was not nearly so concerned. Grace did not get so infatuated that she needed taking care of; often, taking care was the job that fell to Grace, on behalf of Alex.

Grace bit her lip and shivered again, and then shook her head definitively. "It's too pretty out here to stay cooped up inside."

Carmen, who was sitting indian-style on the porch making a knot bracelet chuckled. "You're the only one who can think this is pretty, Princess. You must have a furnace inside. I'm freezing."

"Come on, Gracie." Elizabeth said diplomatically. "Let's go in. You can look out the window, and we can make some tea." Carmen scowled at this notion, but said nothing.

Gracie savored a last longing gaze, and then got up, her shivers a bit more desperate now. Alexandra followed her, a silent shadow. Elizabeth, sparing a glance at Carmen, went after them.

In the massive fireplace, logs roasted cheerily as their socks warmed, spread over the wire screen. Carmen curled her toasted digits, everyone had tea, and a communal bowl of popcorn was being passed around. Kitchens were made for things like this, Carmen thought. Just being together, a sense of community, not–

The kitchen door swung open, abruptly admitting Linda Hooker and terrifying the fire. A cold draft they all resented made them shiver. "Hidey-ho, I'm home." The fire-headed girl said sarcastically, and pulled up a chair, sitting on it backwards. Carmen narrowed her eyes at the visitor and the Linda inclined her head gracefully in agreement. Alexandra got the feeling of a pact being re-signed, a set of rules that had already been agreed on.

"So. You going to college soon, Gracie?" Carmen asked, trying to make the un-content silence into a content conversation. Grace nodded, and spoke in her voice that was all silver and bells.

"The junior college, on the mainland. Nick went there for a little while, and he said some of the teachers are really good. Plus, with mom having been sick and all...I don't really want to leave her yet."

"And you're a senior, right?" Carmen asked Alex. Alex nodded, though the question was moot. Of course she was a senior. Alexandra Howard was the baby of Crowhaven Road, the last one still in high school. Most of the others had graduated some years before, and were working or going to college or taking time off or thinking about moving. Even Grace. Alexandra hated the idea. Soon someone would leave--Grant Chamberlain already had--and then she would feel more alone and desolate than she did already.

"Of course she is." Linda said. "If she wasn't, she'd be gone. Alex is smart enough to do that, right? Not like the rest of us idiots." Linda said bitingly. Alex, of course, couldn't reply. "I hate this place. Hate it. Soon as spring comes, I'm gone."

"If you're so anxious, why don't you go right now?" Carmen asked, her pale blue eyes snapping as she rose to the bait.

"Because I'm not stupid." Linda said, getting up and stalking to the window. "Who in their right mind would leave now? Getting buried in snow is not one of my favorite pastimes."

A snort of disbelief and scorn came from Carmen's direction. "Sure, that's a fine reason. And why not last autumn? Why not last year? You graduated school the year after we did, Linda-loo. Face it. None of us are gonna leave. We're all stuck."

"Stuck? By what?" Linda asked. "That's insane. And it's not true. Grant left."

Elizabeth's eyes turned a deep blue as her face gained an odd serenity. "I expect Grant will be leaving places most of his life."

The other three girls turned to face her, hearing that odd hollowness in her voice. Linda looked annoyed, Carmen looked concerned, Grace looked scared and Alex looked at the floor.

"Maybe because of stuff like that." Linda said. "Maybe cause we're all freaks, and all we got here are parents trying to scare us out of being what are."

"They're right." Elizabeth said, weird hollowness gone. "Nobody in the town likes us. They didn't in high school."

"Speak for yourself." Linda said.

"I am." Elizabeth said. "I didn't sleep with half the boys to prove myself."

Carmen stiffened, sensing an oncoming confrontation. The fights between Liz and Linda were legendary--mostly because Linda had a tendency to fly off the handle. Linda had gone on one date with Adrian Conant last year, and it had been a sore spot between her and Elizabeth ever since. A sore spot that Linda irritated religiously.

"My goodness, you're right!" Linda said softly, in a gasp of sarcastic innocence. "You're so chaste and pure that if you weren't a witch, honey, you'd have to be a nun. Praise Jesus!" She said. A dark look came over her face as she moved in closer to Liz. She tossed her sparkling red hair over her shoulder and her dark-blue eyes burned like they held a hidden fire.

"Except," She whispered, as she drew closer to Liz, "I don't think Adrian likes such chaste females." A wicked grin. "I could be wrong, but I don't think so." Liz shot up and slapped Linda on the cheek. It left a bright red mark. Linda's hard flew up to cover her face and something glimmered in her eyes that might have been tears--maybe.

"Fuck you, Elizabeth Franklin. Take your crappy predictions and stuff them--in real life we know whose going places." Linda said. Then she turned and ran for the door, slamming it as she left. No one went after her.


	9. Chapter 9

Linda stormed into her own house in about five minutes, stalking and rubbing her arms against the freezing wind. She paused in the foyer, wondering if it was worth it. There was a small window halfway up the stairs, on a landing, so that if she looked around it at precisely the correct angle, she could see into Liz's kitchen...but there was no point to that. Linda knew what would happen. They would discuss her bitchiness for maybe half an hour, finish their tea, find nothing more to talk about and go home. It was pathetic, like most of what those kids did. She went upstairs to see David instead.

Linda knocked softly on the second-to-last door in the splendid hallway. The doors and railings and floors were built out of a darkly polished wood that echoed Linda's mood right now. The floorboards creaked unceasingly under her feet, and she and David has been friends since childhood, but she knocked anyway.

"Come in." Said a voice from inside. Linda pushed the door open, and David turned around in his desk chair. David--he reminded Linda of the sort of kind, lovable person she had never been. He was a good clean-cut boy, with dark brown hair and straight eyebrows that danced merrily. Lighter eyes that seemed to register everything around him. And smart, too--Linda could see books and papers spread out on his desk.

"What's up, Lindie?" He asked. "Hey--what happened to your face?"

Linda stiffened. "None of your business."

Wisely, David chose not to say anything. "What's up?"

"Nothing." She said, as she crossed the room's white carpet to sit on the already-made bed. "Davie--you're twenty, same as me."

"Yes, " he said, nodding. "But you were the old lady, there, for awhile."

Linda smiled fleetingly. It was true. She was ten months older than Davie, yet she had been coming to him for advice for as long as she could remember. "So, I mean, why don't you go?"

"Go?" David asked, a perplexed look passing his face.

"Go. You know, like most people. They graduate high school, and get a job or go to college or get married or something--and they move out. It's almost kind of natural. Humans get weaned, and all. So why not you--why not us?"

"Well..." David said, tossing this question around in his head. "It wouldn't help if I said the answer's probably different for each of us?"

"Not much." Linda said.

David sighed. "Well, I'm in college. That's my reason, and I didn't stay in the dorms so I could save mom money. I mean, since Dad skipped, this house is the only thing she's got--she can't go back to work, and it's not like we could afford payments if she took out a loan on the place--so I'm working myself through college and then I'll move, and send some money to mom so she'll be happy. Like that. But like I said, we're all different."

David continued. "I don't think it's because we're lazy or anything--I mean, we do stuff, have jobs and all that." He shrugged. "Maybe we like it here. Maybe we're stuck."

"I don't want to believe that." Linda said.

"Well, I hate to say it, Lindie, but what other choice have you got? I mean, you didn't go to college--"

"With the rest of you freaks?" Linda said, giggling. "God forbid."

"--and you've switched jobs a lot. Like everybody else. Maybe you're waiting for something. Maybe we all are."

"Waiting for something." Linda mused. "I like that better. Waiting for what, I wonder?"

"Spring, maybe?" David shrugged as he sat back down. "I mean, if you believe that stuff--"

"I think I might." Linda said softly, looking at her hands.

"--then, spring is the season of new life and all that. What better time to go out and get stuff done? Maybe this winter is so bad it's been getting us all down."

"That what I think it is." Linda said. "Like this heavy blanket dropping down over me, depressing me, keeping me here. I wonder why Grant didn't have that."

"Maybe Grant did, but he ignored it. You're always followed your feelings, Lindie." David said.

"You're right." Linda said, looking out David's window at the rushing wind. "I have. That's something for me, at least. The precognitive bimbo."

David snorted. "If you're a bimbo, I'm a playboy. I don't know why you keep trying to convince people you don't give a damn--"

"Maybe because I don't want to have to. People hold on to you if they think you care, David. I don't want many people to do that to me. You, Sharon, Mom. That's it, no-one else."

"I could understand that." David said, nodding. "I don't like it, though. I think you're trying to be more like Grant, cause you think it'll help you get out of here. But you said it yourself, Lindie. You feel like something's keeping you here. So go with it. Maybe it'll be the greatest thing you ever had. It's not that long till spring."

Linda blew at her forehead. "Okay. But if I go stir-crazy, it'll be all your fault. I'll probably bug you all winter so you can't get any work done." She rose off the bed. "I think I'll go visit Rachel."

"Would you mind asking Mary if I could have that book, then?" David said, turning back to his papers. "She should be done with it by now, and I've got to write an analysis by next week."

"Okay. Cool." Linda said, shrugging into her coat. "How's Sharon?"

"Same as always." David said, in measured tones. "Staring out the window." Linda nodded, and headed down to the door.


	10. Chapter 10

Linda rubbed her hands together to warm them on the porch of number one. The metal doorbell had been freezing, and Linda's fingers were numb. Frost was already starting to accumulate on the large front windows of the yellow Victorian, and inside it looked like a haven of golden light, like sunlight shining into a freezing crystal cave. Linda saw a blonde Mary Beech, laughing, come down the hall to the door. Her eyebrows drew together as she saw Linda out on the stoop.

"Hello." Mary said. "Well. Come in?" And opened the door and the screen fully to let Linda inside.

"Hi." Linda said, shortly but not in an unfriendly way. As long as Mary would try to get along with her, she would make the same attempt. "David said something about a book analysis, since I was over here. I came to see Rachel?"

"Oh." Mary said. "That was sure nice of you. Hold on, I'll get the book. Boots over there, okay?" Linda nodded, and Mary scurried off to the parlor, where presumably sat the ones who had made her laugh. Linda unlaced her boots so she was left in her wooly socks, and Mary came back from the parlor in a minute with a book.

"And tell David good luck, okay?" Mary asked. "That thing is hard. Great seeing you, Linda!" She said, waving, as she went back to the parlor. Linda nodded as she turned and started heading up the stairs.

"Same to you, Mary." She said.

Linda climbed the three flights of stairs with a practice ease that came from living in crumbling dilapidated old houses. The first flight led up to the regular bedrooms--Mr. And Mrs. Beech's, Mary's. But Rachel had moved out of her old bedroom five years ago, and since had been living in the one of the turrets. A tiny, narrow, wooden staircase led up to this octagonal room. It had only one unvarnished railing, and previous experience with splinters led Linda not to grasp it. Along the banister were tied strings of fishing wire, supporting some of Rachel's fish collection.

God knew why, but Rachel had some bizarre sort of fetish for fish. She loved them. Hanging from her banister were some of her construction paper totems, and from some shop on the mainland she had actually found ceramic fish, that you could hang on the wall. There were little fish statues, little fish plush toys, fish transparency stickies on the window, and the requisite huge salt-water aquarium against the back wall. Rachel had gotten some gels from the high school drama department and made them into sheets that fitted over her lamps, so the room was colored a soft blue. Also hanging from the middle of the ceiling was a small mirrored ball that twirled of it's own violation, spreading little globules of light about the walls, like sunshine from underneath a pool. It was purifying, it was relaxing...but it was also a little bit scary. Linda put down David's book and reclined in a blue bean chair.

"Hello...Linda." Said a tinkling, resonating, and yet slow and musical voice from the doorway. "I went to the....bathroom. And came back to find you here." A chuckle. "Would you, maybe, care to explain that, just a tiny bit?"

Linda sat up straighter in her beanbag. "Didn't want to wake the fish." She said, keeping a straight face.

"Silly girl." Rachel said. "You should know fish don't sleep. Or, at least, their eyes don't close. They _rest_. But _my_ fish do that _all_ the _time_. You don't need to worry about disturbing them." Rachel sighed, a very feminine and tired sound. "No, you wanted to surprise me. But that's okay, Linda, really it is. I like surprises."

Linda smiled, a soft and lazy smile that never quite managed to appear for her mother or for Sharon. "Okay, then, Rachel, that's what I did. I wanted to surprise you."

"I knew it." Rachel said. She knelt down so she was at Linda's eye level, and through her curved coke-bottle glasses, her wide brown eyes blinked. Like a fish, Linda though suddenly, and had to stifle a giggle. Except fish don't have eyelids. Or brown eyes with little green specks in the center and gold all through them--really pretty brown eyes, like that. Fish don't have those.

"Now, you can let _me_ surprise _you_." Rachel said. "I've got a little something that I got from a friend today...a friend of a friend of a friend, you might say...Oh! But first, Linda, I must show you my new fish." She rose up from her squatting position and took Linda's hand, drawing her over to the fish tank. Swimming around happily were two exotic salt-water fish, all fluttery fins and bold spots and stripes.

"They're Gobis. I forget the technical name. From the Mediterranean. And this one is the female, and this one is the male. I call them Yin and Yang." Rachel said, pointing out the fish. "But I hope they don't live up to their reputation."

"The fish have a reputation?" Linda asked. Rachel nodded solemnly.

"In the east, there is a legend that the two great fish Yin and Yang constantly swim and bite the tail of each other. It gives balance and truth to life. Many Asian principals are split between yin and yang. And so they have this symbol." Rachel drew it with her finger on the glass of the fish-tank. A circle, split with a curving S-line, with two dots opposite each other. One half shaded black, one half shaded white.

"Huh. Neat little thing. What do you call that?" Linda asked. Rachel gave a sardonic smile, a wink without batting an eyelash.

"A yin-yang, Linda." Silence for a minute.

"Oh. Okay. Well, it's neat." Linda said. "Now...what about that surprise?"

"From my friend of a friend of a friend? Hold on. I'll get it." Rachel started rummaging around in her makeup drawer until she came up with something about the size of a small prescription pill bottle. From the same drawer she also retrieved a small octagonal mirror. She gestured Linda over.

"Sit, sit." She said. Rachel opened the small bottle with practice ease, and shook some of the contents out onto the mirror. It was powdery, and so white it reflected the light of the room. A scary white, a death-white, a moon white. Cocaine.

Linda's breath died to a hiss. "Where did you get that?"

"I told you. From a friend. Of a friend. Of a friend. Would you like some?"

"That shit's illegal, Rachel."

"I know. But no one will ever find out. And if they do, I can just flush it right down the toilet. Come. Taste a little. It makes everything bad fade away."

Linda was still uneasy. "Don't you snort that stuff, anyway?"

"Some people do. I like to taste it. But don't put it on your tongue...it's too bitter. Rub it on your gums. Come on, just lick your finger and take a very tiny bit."

"I don't know." Linda said, looking warily at it. "We've only ever done pot before, Rachel. I still need to drive home."

"You'll get home. I promise. It won't mess you up too badly. Have I ever lied to you?"

Linda sighed, and shook her head. Then, very slowly, she licked the tip of her picky finger and touched it gently to her gums, rubbed it around, like the one time she had tried powdered toothpaste.

Several things happen simultaneously. The first most noticeable thing was that her gums went numb. They tingled, and then all of the sudden the sensitive muscle that had held her teeth she could no longer feel. So she could no longer feel her teeth, either. She felt them carefully to ascertain that she was not biting her tongue, and resolved to keep her teeth that way for the entirety of her high. Her heart sped up, until it seemed like all her blood was beating in her ears. And then, with the soothing gentleness of water, her problems, her emotions, the cruelty of life, just sorta seemed to fade away. It all rushed out to sea, and didn't come back. Right now Linda felt like she wouldn't have any problems ever again. Then everything got all sort of happy and full of light. She didn't ever want to come down.

"Isn't it sweet, Linda? Isn't it just right?" Rachel was asking, beside her. Linda nodded, and slipped back into the abyss full of light where there was no more pain.

Below, the parlor was full of shining golden light and Mary, Sophia, Adrian and Marshall were studying. 

"Now, look, you guys." Marshall was saying. "In debate competition--"

"In debate competition--" Adrian mocked him, making his voice slow and deep. Marshall glared at him. Adrian laughed again.

"Sorry, man. We've all got the giggles. Isn't that right, ladies?" Adrian said, and leaned back in his chair.

Mary laughed, and Sophia looked at this whole display as if it were below the dignity of the human race. Which it probably was.

"Well, if you want to pass tomorrow, you'd better stop laughing and start listening." Marshall said sternly. "As it is, now, your speech is a pathetic attempt--"

"Well, _I_ thought it was quite good--"

"Shut up. According to the Standard Harvard Format Collegiate Debate, you're supposed to be cross-examined. You're the negative team, which has saved your asses up to now, but when you get up there, you're going to look really stupid if you don't say anything."

"I know what we say. Right, Nixon was a good guy. He did a lot of ground-breaking economic measures, and stuff like that." Marshall sighed.

"I suggest that you read this book tonight." Marshall said, plopping a hardbound book in front of Adrian. "And if you don't, may God help you. You are going to look like a fool." Adrian narrowed his eyes at Marshall, and Marshall stared right back. Adrian looked over to his side and found out that Mary was gone. She came back a minute later, cheeks a little flushed from the cold air outside.

"What was it?" Adrian asked.

"Linda was at the door. You know, David's sister."

"I thought they were only half--"

"I think they are. I dunno...I don't keep track."

"Why was she here anyway?" Sophia asked.

"Oh, she wanted to see Rachel." Mary said, rubbing her hands to warm them. "She just went upstairs."

This response was met with silence. Rachel freaked most of them out.


	11. Chapter 11

Alexandra Howard used her key to open the house. In the summer, it was unlocked, because Grace and Nick were usually out on the porch, anyway. But in the winter it wasn't. Alex's cheeks were red as apples and her eyes were watering. She sniffled, turned the knob, and popped into the Calloway's warm kitchen.

"Alex? Is that you?" Grace's voice, that of a curious but serene and friendly personality, drifted to Alex's ears. When Grace walked through the kitchen archway without hearing Alex reply, she smiled. "See, I knew it. Only you and Nick come in without knocking."

"We're the only ones with keys to your house." Alex said, and sat down at the kitchen, dropping her backpack with a thud.

"Oh, no you're not. Ian has a key, if he thought to ask Nick, and your mom does too, and she could have given it to your dad."

"I don't think my parents would find any reason to come over to my best friend's house." Alex said. "They barely find reason to come into my room."

Grace looked up from wiping down the counter. "Now, don't be silly. You know they care about you."

Alex met Grace's eye. "Not my mother. All we ever do is fight."

Grace nodded, knowing this from experience. Alexandra and Mrs. Howard never agreed on anything.

"And your dad?"

Alex shrugged. "I don't want to talk to him. The only person I feel like talking to is you. Nick is like my big brother."

Grace smiled and showed a charming dimple on her left cheek. She had a little heart-shaped face and soft black curls, with big brown eyes like a fawn's. She walked over to the kitchen table and sat down next to Alex.

"You need a bit more than a big brother, though." Alex studied Grace's face suspiciously.

"I know that look in your eye. That evil glint. You think you've found another prospect for me. Admit it."

"All right, guilty as charged." Grace said, holding up her hands. "I surrender. But you'll like this one, I promise."

"I didn't like any of the others."

"Yes, well. This one is intelligent, and witty--"

"And probably has a ego the size of Jupiter."

"No, he's well-mannered, too. He's cute and _very _charming. It'd just be a little date. Dinner. That's all. A nice evening."

"I just don't like dating, Grace." Alex said. "It doesn't feel right."

Grace sighed and rested her head on her fist. "I wish you wouldn't feel that way."

"You wish you could change the world, Gracie. You're happy, so you want everyone around you to be happy. And I love you for it, I swear. But I just don't want to date people. You'll need to get a little more creative, or just let me frown."

"No, no, no, you do quite enough of that." She said sternly.

"Anyway, this is an old argument." Alex said. "I don't want to fight today."

"Then let me win and we'll stop re-hashing it." Grace said, again with that incorrigible dimple.

Alex chuckled in spite of herself. "You're impossible. But the answer is still no." Grace imitated a heart-melting pout. Alex stuck out her tongue.

Behind them, the kitchen door cracked open and the howling wind could be heard. "Nick!" Grace squealed, and ran over to hug him.

"Wow, easy, easy." Nick said, as he closed the door. He then picked up Grace and swung her in a circle. "Hi there." He said to Alex. He turned back to kiss Grace on the nose, and then on the lips, shortly and sweetly. Grace's face lit up with an inner radiance, and she looked like a content little girl.

"I missed you." She said, and the simple words made it all the more meaningful.

"I missed you, too." Nick said. And the light shining in his mahogany brown eyes showed that they both meant every word of it.

Alex looked at them both from the kitchen table. She was smiling, but deep inside was an ache, somewhere between a pulling and a twisting. She wanted to huddle in a ball, to hug her teddy bear, to cry. _Where's someone like that for me?_ She cried internally, wistfully. _I know he's out there. Where is he?_ At the same time, she was hit with a murderous rage, rushing straight toward Grace's black curls. She wanted to rip them out one by one, wanted to throw her against the wall and break her nose. It just wasn't fair. Grace was happy. Why couldn't she, Alex, be happy? What was wrong with her?

She had been waiting for _so long_.

Somewhere in this monologue she had moved silently off the chair, unnoticed by the happy couple, and sat quietly on the cool kitchen floor, closing her eyes. She lay down, felt the chill of the tile on the back of her neck.

"Alex? Hey, Nick, something's wrong with Alex."

Of course she would ask Nick. She had Nick to ask. She had someone there, someone who would care whether she lived or died. She'd grown up with him, to make it all the more painful: they were perfection embodied, the sort of childhood sweethearts that everyone had known would get married, from the day they were born. They were Grace-and-Nick, a single person, an indivisible unit. Their first kiss had been when they were five years old.

"Alex?" Came Nick's voice, from above. For an excruciating half a second, Alex wanted desperately to grab him and kiss him, just to see what Grace would do. It wouldn't be a horrible thing--Nick was cute, after all, with those dark, mysterious eyes and the wavy hair that flopped over his forehead like that. There was a strength in his chin, to make you think he was just dying to protect you, and a twinkle in his eye that said he would take risks to do it. And then, the ultimate temptation--Nick brushed Alex's hair back from her forehead and tucked it over her ears, a tender gesture. Alex nearly burst into tears on the spot, but had the sense of decorum to keep breathing faintly, and to flutter her eyelashes.

"Is she okay?" Came Grace's voice, worried and in a darker pitch, not clear and bright like normal. The sweet voice touched by concern invaded her barrage of self-pity.

"I think she's fainted or something." Nick said. His hands behind her neck, lifting her head. Alex fluttered her lashes once more, and then blinked a few times, slowly, and moved her head a little, as if dizzy.

"I'm okay--now." Alexandra said, and let Nick help her sit up.

"What _happened_?" Grace asked. If you had sense enough to actually know, you wouldn't let me back in this house to faint on your kitchen floor and have your boyfriend pick me up, Alex thought.

"I...fell." She improvised. "Everything just kind of...stretched out. So I thought if I sat...but then it all kind of went dark, and..."

"You poor dear," Grace sympathized. "You just came in from outside. Maybe it was too warm in here for you right away."

"Maybe I'll faint," Nick mused, with that wicked twinkle in his eye. "And then you could take care of me."

"Oh, stop it." Grace said, swatting him. "You're so vulgar. He's so vulgar." She said to him and then to Alex. Alex chuckled. What had she been thinking before? Petty jealously, that was all. They were happy together, and they _deserved _to be happy together, Nick and Grace. She loved Nick, just like a doting big brother, and she loved Grace. It was _good_ they loved each other. It was good for them to be happy together. The only bad thing in the equation was her, Alex Howard. She couldn't get the idea through her thick skull that Nick and Grace were meant to be together. She couldn't just go out and get a boyfriend of her own. Well, that was her problem, and she would have to solve it herself. She took the pain and pushed it a little further down into her soul, to deal with later.

"She's right, Nick. You're disgusting." Alex said, and Grace smiled smugly. Nick wore a look of fake horror and disapproval.

"Only disgusting? And I was going for outright despicable." He grinned, and the expression of horror faded. "Oh well. I can always try again later. See, I'm determined, too."

Alex laughed lightly, and Grace joined in. This was where she belonged. She was with her friends, her real family.


	12. Chapter 12

__

1974, Winter

The large, warm kitchen smelled of apple pulp. Mrs. Howard was making applesauce in an enormous kettle in the huge fireplace, which she insisted was the only way to do it correctly. But before the apples were boiled and mashed and then stirred with cinnamon, they had to be peeled and cored and sliced. The two girls sitting at the table had been doing this, on and off, since mid-day. Mr. Howard had gotten out of the house early, since Mrs. Howard had claimed it was a day for the girls.

"Apples were sacred to the queen of Heaven." She said, proudly. "And harvest-time is when Demeter thrives."

Mr. Howard cleared his throat. "If I recall correctly--" he said., and was interrupted.

"Obviously, you don't." Mrs. Howard said. "I insist the girls and I have some alone time. And if you want to feel like you're part of the whole process, you can go pick up some apples. Lots of apples."

"Certainly, dear." Mr. Howard said, hiding a smile and going back to his newspaper. Mrs. Howard nodded perfunctorily and kissed him on top of the head. Alexandra had blushed from the corner, under the pretense that she wasn't paying attention.

"I'm going to be smelling apples for years." Alexandra said. But she wasn't really complaining...she loved these times when it was just her and her mother, with no opposite views to fight over or arguments to have.

"Me too." Grace said beside her. "And I've cut my fingers so many times. There's a lot of my blood in that applesauce, I'll have you know. You're eating part of me."

"Thank you for that valuable information." Alexandra said. "I'll remember your sacrifice." She giggled, and then took a bite out of the nearest un-pealed apple.

School had just started a while back for both of them, Alexandra starting her senior year at the high school and Grace starting her freshman year at the junior college on the mainland. She hadn't wanted to think about the pressure of getting into a four-year school last year, with all the graduation things going on, and then her mother had gotten sick. So Grace had just decided to take a year off and then go to junior college. She was tolerably happy. It was the people up here, her family, that mattered most to her.

"Oh! Hey...too bad you took a bite out of that apple." Grace said suddenly. Alex looked up.

"What do you mean?" Alex asked, and took another bite.

"I mean, you need a whole apple. I heard of something once..."

"We've got plenty of those." Alex said, drawing another apple out of the large cloth bag. "What kind of something?"

"A game. It's actually supposed to be a divination, a prophesy. Tells you who you're going to marry." Alex raised her eyebrows.

"With an apple, huh? How quaint." Alex laughed. "Okay. How do you do it?"

"You're supposed to peel the apple, all the way around, in one big spiral." Grace said. "To start. Careful now, make sure you don't break it."

Mrs. Howard came in from the parlor. "I've heard of that." She said, in her no-nonsense matter. "That's not a thing for girls to try. You shouldn't even worry about getting married yet." She said, but didn't attempt to stop them.

"Lots of girls get married at nineteen." Grace said, a little offended. They weren't girls.

"Not my daughter." Mrs. Howard said.

"And it's not like you need a divination, Gracie." Alex piped up. "You and Nick are stuck together like glue." Grace blushed bright red.

"That doesn't mean I'm gonna marry him." Gracie said. Alex smiled sagely. Her grin widened and Grace ducked her head.

"Well, okay, maybe I will." Grace said. Alex started to chuckle. "Stop laughing! Not like it's any of your business or anything." Gracie said, a little embarrassed. But her face was lit up and she was smiling like the whole sun was behind her eyes, so Alex knew she wasn't bothered. Besides, she had to stop chuckling--if she slipped, the peeling would break. At that moment, though, something broke through her cloud of concentration--a harsh sound, like a gunshot bursting into the warm room. Something that felt like a cold wind touched her neck, and she shivered.

"Oh!" Gracie exclaimed. "Get out of here, you evil thing. Go on now, get!" She said sharply, and went around behind Alex to close the kitchen window that looked out onto the garden. "Why do you think that thing was here, Mrs. Howard? You never see crows in winter…do you?"

"I suppose you could see them all the time." Mrs. Howard said distractedly. She was trying to figure out whether or not this batch of apples had boiled long enough. "I don't think they fly south. They're carrion eaters, crows."

Grace shivered. "How awful."

"It takes all kinds, now, Gracie." Mrs. Howard reprimanded her gently. But then she frowned. "But I know how you feel…my grandmother used to say that a crow at the window means evil spirits are afoot. I'd almost believe that…it's cold so early this year. Look at the snow outside. It's better the window was closed, anyway. Are you done peeling the apple yet, Alex?"

"Almost, mom." Alex said. She was just maneuvering around the tricky part at the bottom now, where it became all curvy and complicated. "And I mean, it's probably none of my business at all…" Alex said, in a tone that meant she intended to continue, "But you two have just been dating since you were younger than me. If you don't get married, soon, I'll graze in that pile of dried-up leaves on the lawn." Mrs. Howard clucked her tongue in a disapproving fashion, but she was smiling. Alex finally finished peeling the apple in one long spiral, and gathered it up delicately in two hands.

"Wow...on your first try." Grace marveled, quickly changing the subject. "That would have taken me ages. You're pretty quick."

"Oh, hush." Alex said. She didn't want to think about it. She especially didn't want to think of the fact that in her mind she had just seen her small graceful hands peeling the apple perfectly on the first try. She _definitely_ didn't want to think about the fact that what she usually saw playing out in her mind turned out to be exactly, eerily, true. "What do I do now?"

"Kiss it." Grace said definitively. "Kiss it and think of...I dunno, some hunk or something. Someone you can love."

"Marriage isn't all about love." Mrs. Howard put in. "It's about respect and working together. A partnership."

"How boring." Alex yawned. "There's got to be something romantic and dashing about love and marriage."

"That's for newlyweds." Mrs. Howard said practically.

"Now, toss it over your shoulder. Your right shoulder." Grace said. Grace's words were coming faster now, Alexandra noticed. Was she actually excited about this funny little ritual that bored teenagers had practiced for centuries before their time? It probably wouldn't even work, she thought. A spiral on the floor is only that, a spiral.

But still...

She tossed it over her right shoulder, thinking of a tall, brooding, handsome man that she saw only in her dreams. The face was only in shadow, but the voice was rich and melodic, and his voice made her feel as if she were the only cherished thing in the world. She never saw his face, but his _voice_...he could melt hearts with that voice. The spiral seemed to hang in the air for a moment, almost as if floating while making its decision, and dropped to the floor behind the chair. Simultaneously, all three female heads looked down at the shape it had formed.

There could be no mistake about it. It had formed a perfect, if slightly rounded-off, 'B'. Grace was frowning.

"But that's so funny." Grace said, wrinkling her nose. "That doesn't make any sense at all."

"Why not?" Alex asked, turning her head from the spiral to Gracie."

"Well, it's just that none of the boys around here have names with a B, that's all. There's Richard and Charles and Grant, Ian and Nick and Marshall, David and Will and Adrian, and James. That's it. No B's. Not even in last names. The only ones up here that have last names that start with B's are girls."

"Mary and her sister. And Melissa and her cousin, Sophie." Alexandra said, in a soft voice. "Well, I don't have to marry a guy around here, you know."

"Certainly not." Mrs. Howard said. "You've grown up with these children, but there's no reason you have to marry among them. That's only sense."

"Right." Alexandra said, and thought it ironic that this one of the few things she and her mother had ever agreed on. "Anyway, it's silly. It can't tell the future. It's only a little apple." Mrs. Howard's eyebrows arched and she swept the apple peel with a glance.

"Better pick that up." She said, and turned back to the mashing.

Alexandra has picked it up, and started peeling another apple--the easy way this time--when she heard a loud clatter.

"Hey what was that?" Grace asked. "It was pretty loud."

"I wonder..." Mrs. Howard said. "Probably a shutter. The wind's been pretty strong. You girls stay here." She waved them back into their seats and went into the living room, out to the way of the back porch.

Alex looked nervous and was clasping her hands. Grace looked at Alex with concern in her eyes. "What is it, Alex? It's only some old shutter. Nothing to worry about."

"I know." Alex said. "I _know_ that, but I don't believe it. I've got this deep yawning pit inside...and I'm so nervous. I don't know why." She said.

"Silly." Grace said, but took Alex's hand anyway. "It was the shutters, of course. They're old and heavy, so of course when they hit the house they're gonna make a loud clatter. Happens in my house all the time. Your mom will just go out and latch them and it'll be fine." Right then, Mrs. Howard came back into the room.

"Well, I latched the shutters." Mrs. Howard said. "But that wasn't what the noise was. It was the funniest thing. You know that old willow broom I keep in the stand in the living room?"

The girls nodded.

"Well, it just fell right over. It's stood for lord knows how long, and today it just decided to up and fall to the ground. That must have been what made the noise, against the hardwood floor and all." She looked at Grace in a funny way, and gave her a nervous wink. "You know what that means, Miss Old-Wives-Tales." She said.

"What?" Gracie asked, looking puzzled.

"Broom fell." Mrs. Howard said, in a far-away voice. "Means, company's coming."

Where Alex's hands had only been shaking before, now she felt her eyes widen and her skin grow clammy and cold. She didn't know what it was, but she was dreadfully nervous...almost afraid of something.

"Hey mom?" Alex said, standing. "I don't feel too well, and we have most of the apples done. I think maybe I should head up to bed."

"Cramps?" Mrs. Howard asked, and Alex nodded, just to allay questions. The only thing this had to do with her stomach was the butterflies in it. What she really wanted was to curl up in a little ball with her teddy bear and whimper. She hoped her mother would grant her approval soon--she didn't think she could remain standing much longer. Finally, Mrs. Howard nodded.

"Yes, I think you should lie down. I'll bring up the hot-water bottle." Mrs. Howard said. "Go on up." Alex turned and began walking towards the stairs in the living room.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. The front-porch door, only a few feet away. Through the frosted glass, they could see a shadow. Alex froze suddenly. She wasn't about to fall, but all of a sudden she felt like she couldn't move if she tried.

"Now, who could that be?" Mrs. Howard asked wonderingly. She made her way over to the door, but looked back over her shoulder and caught sight of Alex. "Alexandra! Sit down immediately!" She scolded. Grace came over to guide Alexandra to a chair.

"She's right." Grace said. "You're awful pale. I'll go see who it is." Grace said. "Hey, maybe it's Mr. B." She said, with a wink. Alex moaned and leaned her forehead on the chair back.

Though she knew the time was passing in seconds, each click of the clock seemed to take an eternity. She was living and dying in the spaces between those seconds, because she _knew_ that whoever was behind that door was going to completely change her life.

Too slowly, far too slowly, Mrs. Howard and Grace made their way to the door. What was taking them so long, Alex wondered. How long had it been? A thousand years, an eternity? How long had her heart been beating so erratically it was like to fall out of her chest any second? Couldn't fate just stop toying with her and get it _over_ with?

Alexandra's vision blanked out. Her body acted with no permission from her, completely out of it's own accord. With knowing in the least what she was really doing, she flew out of the chair. She wouldn't know until later that she had moved so fast it was near supernatural, that she had looked like a black-and-white blur moving in a different time frame, that the look on her face was one of passionate agony. Somehow, she got to the door and wrenched it open, forgetting totally that Mrs. Howard and Grace were even there.

With sound, with his voice, came clarity. When it's musical lilt touched her ears, her vision cleared and she felt human again.

"Good evening." He said. His eyes were blue and ocean-deep, his cheeks, ears and nose were pink from the frigid air outside. His hair was shaded gold--gleaming in the shadowed twilight, soft waves brushed back over his ears. Lips perfectly chiseled, perfectly kissable. Strong chin, good shoulders, nice arms, and his hands, clasped in front of him, were clean and...sensitive? An artist's hands. His whole being was a masterpiece. "I was wondering if perhaps I could borrow some matches..." 

"Well, but I'm sure we have some matches around here someplace." Mrs Howard said, a bit flustered, as the man--he had introduced himself as John Blake, kicked the snow off his shoes. "But are you sure that old cast-iron stove will work? I mean, that house hasn't been lived in for…well, years. It was empty back in my mother's time. And her mother's time, too." But she handed him the matches she had managed to find in the kitchen, anyway. They had invited him to come inside the house, but Mr. Blake had shook his head politely at the invitation, and pointed at his wet and muddy shoes, grinning at the girls.

"Thanks very much, Mrs. Howard. I'm pretty sure it'll work…I mean, back when folks lived up here on the bluff, when the original settlers came, all they had was chopped wood and a stove like that. And flint, to boot. I even have a piece of that, for luck, but I'm not that crazy. The wood's all snug and dry under a tarp." There was something about his smile and his easygoing manner that got right under your defenses…the way he was standing now, rubbing his cold hands together, made one think he could stand to wait all day on that cold, snowy doorstep.

"Well, but it's snowing like anything outside." Mrs. Howard said, peering out the door towards dark and lumbering number thirteen, the house at the end of the bluff, doubtfully. "I mean, I'm sure there's holes in the roof and rats and spiders and heaven knows what." Mrs. Howard sighed, looked at Mr. Blake, and then looked at Alexandra, who frankly seemed almost entranced by the charismatic Mr. Blake. "I mean, there's a very nice inn down in town, and then several hotels on the mainland. Seems as if it would make more sense to stay there…at least until this cold snap blows over. You wouldn't even be able to fix up the house, not in this weather, not for awhile."

"I figure if there's enough space for me to lay down a sleeping bag, and to sweep away the snow, I'll be fine. I've made it through on the tundra before, with a lot less to block the wind. But I thank you sincerely for your suggestions, Mrs. Howard." He said, and cast a glance toward his truck, parked on the end of the street.

"Oh…but…" Mrs. Howard tried to continue, her sense of New England hospitality obviously warring with her sense of decorum.

"Couldn't he stay here, mom?" Alexandra asked softly, her eyes not leaving Mr. Blake's face. "We've got an extra bedroom. The green one."

"I don't know that that would be proper, Alex." Mrs. Howard said, her voice clipped and embarrassed. "After all, Gracie is spending the night as well."

"Mom!" Alex said, even more ashamed. "Gracie was going to spend the night in my room. Like she always does. Wasn't that right, Gracie?" And then Alex ploughed right over Gracie's attempt at a reply. "I mean, come on mom, Mr. Blake is older than Nick."

"Not much older." Mrs. Howard muttered, folding her hands.

"You're being weird." Alex said, disapprovingly. "It is not the nineteenth century anymore, mom. I can still get married if I don't have a dowry, you know." Alex twisted her ring, a nervous gesture, and then she turned to Mr. Blake.

"Mr. Blake? We have an extra bedroom. Would you like to stay with us?" Alex asked.

Mr. Blake smiled down at her. "As much as I'd like to, I don't think that would be a good idea." He said. "It'd make your mother unhappy. But how about a compromise--if you'll let me come in and warm up for a little bit, I'll go and look at the house and see what needs to be fixed…and if it's too much, I'll stay in town until the weather blows over. How's that for a deal?" He asked, and looked in Mrs. Howard's direction. Mrs. Howard nodded briefly, and smiled, the hard eyes relaxing.

"Of course. Come on in, then, Mr. Blake…you'll have to excuse the mess, we're making applesauce."

"Applesauce…my mother used to do that at the first snow." Mr. Blake said, unlacing his boots.

"So did mine…" Mrs. Howard replied, and put a teakettle on the stove. And Alex knew at that moment that Mr. Blake had completely won her mother over.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13 

The quartet of them had talked, over tea and cookies, and Alexandra found herself becoming more enthralled with Mr. Blake with every passing hour. The way he used his hands expressively to talk, when he hadn't on the porch because it had been too cold outside. The way he could listen, that let you know, even if he was being totally silent, that his attention was entirely focused on you and you alone. And of course the tones in his voice.

Alex had discovered there was more to love than just the sheer musical lilt of it, though just in hearing that she would bet he could sing beautifully. There was something in the way he spoke, a pattern in which words he stressed, the speed of his speech and the mellowness of his attitude that completely captivated his audience. And the way he told his stories…Alex found herself savoring the words, replaying them in her mind, and that half an hour after she had met this man for the first time she was wishing he would never leave.

But he did leave, though he was kind enough to break the news to them gently.

"Well..." He said, just after he had gotten through telling them a story of when he had done some carpentry work in Mexico, "I really must be going. I'm sorry, but with us being neighbors, I'll come back and visit often." He said, rising slowly from the chair and looking out the window while he did so. "Night's coming on quickly." He observed.

"It does that more in a snowstorm." Mrs. Howard said, getting up to whisk away the plates and teapot.

"And when it's edging towards the equinox, too." Mr. Blake agreed, a smile flashing again. "The time when the world turns around." His voce took on a slightly darker and more mystical shade.

"That it does." Mrs. Howard concurred with the remark, piling the dishware on the drying board and turning back to Mr. Blake, who had sat down on the little bench to tug on his boots again. "If you believe the old legends, that is."

Mr. Blake chuckled merrily. "Mrs. Howard, you ought to know better than anyone else that there isn't a place in Massachusetts that doesn't have its old tales and secrets."

"Oh, I don't know about the rest of the land." Maeve Howard said idly. "But my grandparents lived on this bluff, as did their grandparents, generations back. I guess some might consider those to be old secrets. But they're probably only boring old family gossip."

"Ha!" Mr. Blake exclaimed. "There's an admirable woman for you. Most women I know would be fascinated by gossip, even three centuries old."

Alexandra could have sworn her heart skipped a beat. He knew other women? She found herself intensely, ravenously curious as to how many, what age, and what relation they had to him.

"Three centuries?" Mrs. Howard inquired politely. "You have ancestors who lived in New Salem, Mr. Blake?"

Mr. Blake winked at Mrs. Howard, and Alex's eyes widened. She had never seen anyone wink at her mother, before. Strangely enough, her mother didn't seem instantly offended.

"Well, now, I'd have to, to have inherited the house, wouldn't I? Not the type to go rushing into a place if I don't feel like I might be welcome there." He explained, and with the boots firmly on, he stood. "But you three have certainly relieved all my fears about moving to a new place all alone. It's always good to have kind neighbors."

"Oh, we're all kindly neighbors, up here." Mrs. Howard said, returning the strange smile.

"Well...I'll say then that this appears to be exactly the kind of place I was hoping for." Mr. Blake nodded, and turned toward the door.

"When you get the house looked at, tell us what your problem are. Mr. Howard does a fair bit of handy work, and it's possible he'll be able to help out." Mrs. Howard offered in a friendly manner. "After all, anything to help out a neighbor."

"I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Howard." Mr. Blake said, his face brightening as he crossed the kitchen to shake her hand. "But now I really must be on my way. Thank you so much for your hospitality. Bye, girls." He said, shaking Alex and Grace's hands in turn, and then waving as he left through the heavy kitchen doors. The trio waited a few seconds in the kitchen, until they heard the motor of his truck start.

Alex blinked and stared at her hand a little. Her head still felt like it was buzzing a little, as if she had just recovered from a fever. Was it possible, or had she just imagined it, that he had held her hand for a few seconds longer than he had Gracie's or her mothers? She closed her eyes and imagined the strength and vitality in that hand again. Oh, she'd never wash this hand as long as she lived. But that was ridiculous...he couldn't actually like her. He'd barely said more than a quick farewell on the way out. And she was only seventeen…he had to be twenty-three, maybe older. Too old for a high-school girl. Of course, she was almost eighteen. Maybe someday. Maybe someday soon. Her gaze drifted towards the kitchen door.

"Alexandra?" Her mother's voice called her back to the present. "Do you feel a little better now? The color's come back to your face."

"Huh? Oh. Yes, I feel fine now." Alex said, smiling absently, the emotion lighting up her pale porcelain face and making roses in her cheeks. She looked like Snow White. "I suppose the tea helped, or something."

"I suppose it did." Mrs. Howard said distractedly. In fact, she looked very distracted, as if her mind had bizarrely become occupied by things entirely different than what she had been thinking only minutes before. Her face cleared for a minute, like that of a child that has suddenly discovered how to catch a butterfly, and then she blinked and the abstracted air again replace the clarity. "Hmmm. We really ought to be getting dinner started...your father will be home from work soon."

Mrs. Howard started to go around the kitchen, removing the applesauce already made and getting various dinner accoutrements out and ready to go. She was so distracted and oblivious the rest of the night that it left Alexandra free to drift about and dream, which she did, sighing every once in awhile.


End file.
